


Let the immeasurable come

by i_claudia



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, Big Bang Challenge, Boys In Love, Community: paperlegends, Dancing, M/M, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 20:20:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 41,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/930716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_claudia/pseuds/i_claudia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If anyone had asked Merlin in January if he would consider spending his summer in the woods two hours beyond the middle of nowhere, he probably would have laughed himself sick. Yet here he is, the newest counselor on staff at Camp Albion, his life signed away for eight weeks of mosquito bites and screaming children.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let the immeasurable come

**Author's Note:**

> A long, long time ago, I decided I should take my fandom to work. I put down a few ideas and put the story aside, but it kept tugging at me, trying to be written. (Also, corvus_noir kept bugging me for it. A lot. _All the time_.) For all the time spent thinking and planning, I ended up writing it in one fell and frenzied swoop... but here it is at last, just in time for the final paperlegends! 
> 
> All my hugs for Team Gluttony, who graciously allowed me to poll them for ideas and cheered me on, but most of all... You guys. GUYS. Major, major kudos, love, and still-beating sacrificial hearts to viennajones, who cheered me from the beginning, _volunteered_ to make me art at the last gasp of crunch time, and who, basically, is the only reason this fic was ever finished. Please, please, leave her the thousand gushing comments she 100000% deserves on the brilliant art she created, which you can find [over here](http://pastelwoods.livejournal.com/2827.html). 
> 
> The title, by the way, is yoinked from a Mary Oliver poem. One brief warning for mentions of pedophilia/child abuse.
> 
> (IMPORTANT ETA BECAUSE I CAN'T BELIEVE I FORGOT. A hundred -- nay, a googlybillion heartfelt thanks and the remaining love in my wizened heart to the_muppet, who puts together the best big bang I've ever had the pleasure to participate in. I can't imagine how many hours of work a fest this gigantic takes, and the_muppet has been unfailingly wonderful about each authorial slip-up along the way. Dear muppet, thank you so much for all your hard work throughout the years of this fest, it's been a joy. And thanks this year especially, for letting viennajones and I join forces at the last minute!)

_And, therefore, let the immeasurable come._  
 _Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine._  
 _Let the wind turn in the trees,_  
 _and the mystery hidden in dirt_

_swing through the air._

The water is a freezing shock, and Merlin knows he's flailing as he falls, the lake closing over his head in a quiet green gulp. He's sure, suddenly, that he's going to hit his head on the side of the canoe and knock himself unconscious; oh God, he's going to drown and generations of children will listen to the story of his ineptitude held up as an example— 

He pops to the surface, gasping and blinking water from his eyes. “Oh,” he says, and the word echoes around the inside of the overturned canoe. “Well, then.” For a moment, he thinks about staying in the little cave instead of bobbing under and out, but his air would probably run out and even with the life jacket on he doesn't especially feel like treading water for the rest of his life. He sighs, and ducks back into the outside world. 

“Jesus, Merlin,” Arthur says from the other side of the canoe, scowling, his hair wet and sticking to his face. “I thought you'd gone under.”

“No such luck,” Merlin drawls, just to see Arthur's expression grow even darker. 

“This isn't a game.”

“Of course not,” Merlin grumbles. “It's not like we're throwing ourselves into a freezing lake for _fun_.”

Morgana's voice on the bullhorn interrupts whatever comeback is teetering on Arthur's lips. “We're on a schedule here, boys, save the pillowtalk!”

Arthur grimaces and sticks his hands over the bottom of the canoe. Merlin kicks himself closer and grabs for Arthur's fingers, remembering to cross his arms at the last second.

“My _wrists_ , Merlin, are you a total incompetent?” Arthur snaps, correcting Merlin's grip. His voice changes, going strangely formal. “Are you okay?”

“I'm okay,” Merlin recites, bottling the urge to snark back at Arthur. “Are you okay?”

Arthur doesn't bother to respond, just yells, “We're okay!” across to the dock, Merlin chiming in hurriedly a beat behind.

They turn the canoe between them and strike out for shore. Merlin does his best to heave the canoe along while dogpaddling, his life jacket bumping uncomfortably against his chin, but he's pretty sure they only make it because Arthur's strong enough to pull a tractor up a hill alone. With his teeth.

It takes them just long enough to reach the shore that Merlin's stopped shivering and grown used to the water, but when he stands up, the breeze hits cold against his spine. He grits his teeth against it and struggles to hold his end of the boat up while he and Arthur lift and turn it, dumping the water out. They don't have to haul it anywhere, thank God; Gwaine and Leon are already stepping forward, paddles in hand, ready to go out for their own mock 'shipwreck'. 

“Excellent work,” Morgana's saying into her bullhorn, pointing it at Arthur's head. She's wearing a long-sleeved Camp Albion shirt over her suit, but she hasn't taken off her giant sunglasses despite the heavy clouds hanging low over the lake. “Glad to know you won't drown and die if your canoe ever tips over, brother dearest.” Arthur scowls; Morgana smiles sweetly at him and blows her whistle. “Next victims!” she bellows—Gwen and Elena are already out in their own canoe, waiting for her signal—“Ready! Set! Tip!”

Merlin wraps himself in his towel, swiping at the water dripping from his hair down his neck, and braces himself when he notices Arthur watching him. “What?”

“Don't forget to flip your tag over,” Arthur says, throwing his own towel over his shoulder. “You're due in the kitchen in fifteen minutes.” 

“I knew that,” Merlin mutters, but Arthur's already turning away, striding off to go do who knows what. Arthur could walk all the way into town and stay there, for all Merlin cares. He sighs, and flips the tag with his name on it back over on its hook on the side of the boathouse—for all that Arthur might wish otherwise, he hasn't drowned or disappeared, and is still alive to flip it. 

The slog up the hill to the cabin area is that much harder with wet flip flops, and Merlin nearly slips twice into the mud as he squishes dismally along. At least the rain had dried up that morning.

Percy passes him, going the other direction. “Survived your shipwreck?”

“More or less,” Merlin says, enduring the friendly shoulder punch. 

“Change quick,” Percy tells him. “Nimueh's on a rampage today.”

“Joy,” Merlin says, dry; Percy laughs and carries on down the hill, leaving Merlin to stump up the wooden steps to his cabin as his wet suit sticks to his legs and drips. Merlin is, fortunately, a master at the quick-change, although it's significantly more difficult when he's still damp as he's trying to pull his jeans on. He's shrugging into a sweatshirt within minutes, barely remembering to put his sneakers on instead of his flip-flops. The screen door bangs behind him, making him wince, but there's no one around to hear or scold him for it, and he's jogging off down to main camp before the echoes fade. 

If anyone had asked Merlin in January if he would consider spending his summer in the woods two hours beyond the middle of nowhere, he probably would have laughed himself sick. Yet here he is, the newest counselor on staff at Camp Albion, his life signed away for eight weeks of mosquito bites and screaming children. It isn't all bad, Merlin supposes. The camp is gorgeous, nestled by a long lake beneath the pines with hills rising up on every side. Eagles and osprey circle the lake, and the first few nights of training Merlin had woken up in a panic, startled into a racing pulse by the eerie calls of the loons. Everywhere he turns it seems there's wildlife he couldn't even begin to name. He strongly suspects most of it should be in a zoo, safely behind a cage. 

The wooden cabins are nestled together, tucked snugly away in the trees under low roofs which seem to blend into the forest, and a well-worn path snakes down from the uppermost cabin toward the waterfront and the main buildings. It's this path he trots along now, toward Camelot Hall and the kitchens adjoining the mess. He's two minutes early for dinner prep, but Sophia throws an apron and a hat at him and says, “You're late. I need everything chopped for the veggie platters before we can start setting tables.”

“I'm early,” Merlin protests, settling the baseball cap on his head. It's his least favorite of the kitchen hats, olive-colored with a giant FFA logo above the brim. 

“Not in Nimueh's kitchen, you're not,” Sophia says, smug. “Five minutes early, or you're late.”

“That doesn't make any sense,” Merlin grumbles, but he picks out the tubs of vegetables from the walk-in refrigerator and sets up a station. 

Gaius is loitering in the mess hall, ostensibly counting silverware, but he brightens when he sees Merlin and comes around into the kitchen. 

“Merlin! Settling in alright?”

“I guess,” Merlin says, putting a cutting board down and gingerly starting to slice the carrots. He'd chopped off a bit of his thumb two days earlier, and still has the bandage to prove it.

“Finger healing well?” Gaius asks, coming over to inspect it. “Wouldn't want you to lose it.”

“I'll be sure to find you at the infirmary if it starts turning green,” Merlin promises, then pauses. “Is that likely?”

“Of course not,” Gaius assures him as he watches Merlin work steadily through the carrots. 

“I wouldn't be surprised, here,” Merlin mutters—it's as if, in the forced move to camp, he's traveled back fifty years, to a time before television, insulation, and proper medical care. 

“Now, Merlin,” Gaius says reprovingly. “The woods aren't all that bad. Why, I remember—”

“Gaius,” Nimueh says, stalking around the long wooden trestle table in the middle of the kitchen and tapping a finger on his chest. “Stop bothering my workers and get out of my kitchen.” Gaius grumbles and huffs, but Nimueh stands and stares at him until he shuffles out into the mess hall. Merlin notices him snag a few biscuits off the cooling rack as he goes by the ovens, hiding them from Nimueh until he's safely out of reach. Merlin grins, and turns back to carefully slicing red peppers.

“Not that way,” Nimueh says from directly behind him, startling him into nearly chopping his other thumb off. “You'll be here all day. Like this.” She takes the knife from him and pulls the cutting board to her, flipping the pepper halves over and chopping them into perfectly even strips in seconds while Merlin stares. He didn't think anyone could cut that fast outside of _Iron Chef_. “Make yourself useful,” Nimueh orders him, still slicing away; “Go dish out the ranch. We've got five tables today.” She pulls another pepper toward her, ripping out the stem and seeds in one smooth motion before reducing it to another pile of perfect slices.

Merlin likes the walk-in—he suspects he'll like it even more once they hit July and it's a hundred degrees in the kitchen with the ovens going—but he can't shake the irrational fear that the door will somehow close on him and he'll be trapped in a refrigerator and no one will hear him pounding on the door or screaming, and he'll die of hypothermia before someone finds him. He leaves the door wide open as he goes in, wedging it with a rock he'd found outside the boathouse so it won't swing shut behind him while he hunts down the ranch. It's in an enormous plastic jar that's bigger than his head, but it still takes him long enough to find it that he's shivering when he comes back out into the warmer air outside. Sophia already has the little cups laid out for the ranch, and she gives him a pat on the shoulder.

“It's easier when you learn where everything is,” she reassures him, arranging the carrot sticks and cut peppers on plates while Merlin tries to pour the ranch without getting it all over himself. “You don't have to spend five minutes looking for the milk. But you won't have to learn all that! You just have to move fast enough to get us through until the rest of the kitchen staff arrive.”

“Sophia,” Nimueh calls from the back pantry. “We need butter plates.”

“Already on the serve counter,” Sophia yells back. “And the baskets are ready for the biscuits.”

“Merlin, biscuits!”

“Eight biscuits to a basket,” Sophia clarifies for Merlin. “And Arthur should be here in a minute; he said he'd help us set the tables.”

“Wonderful,” Merlin mutters, and piles biscuits into the cloth-lined baskets with slightly more force than necessary. Arthur will probably have a hundred rules about table-setting, each one of them specifically designed to trip Merlin up and make him look like an idiot.

He doesn't know why Arthur hates him. Well—maybe, sort of, but the only clue he has is a stupid one, so it can't be right. 

“Merlin,” Arthur had said when Merlin had introduced himself, the first day of staff training, and raised an eyebrow. “Right. I suppose Gwaine put you up to that.”

“Sorry?” Merlin had asked, confused when Arthur's expression deepened into a frown. The meeting had devolved from there. Merlin is willing to admit that perhaps he hadn't been really justified in the names he'd called Arthur at the time, but he'll stand by them now, because they've all been proven true. Arthur's reaction had been completely uncalled for. 

He might not know why Arthur hates him—he'd done nothing wrong, after all—but he knows exactly why he hates Arthur. Arthur is a prick. 

“Merlin!”

Merlin twists his face at the biscuits he's holding, then turns around. “Yes?”

“Speed it up, will you?” Arthur strides down the center of the mess hall, his steps sure on the worn pine boards. His hair is still damp, and his sunglasses are pushed up on his head, messing with his bangs. At least, Merlin thinks, he hasn't popped his collar—the effect is bad enough without it. “Dinner's in fifteen minutes and you're nowhere near ready; you've barely got the chairs down. Have you even wiped the tables off?”

“They're all ready to be set; no spoons today,” Sophia calls out from the through-window, pushing the tray of salt and pepper shakers forward. Arthur nods to her as he takes a handful of each, laying them on the first few tables.

“Fill the water pitchers,” Arthur tells Merlin, finishing with the shakers and crossing to the tall cabinets on the left side of the mess hall, pulling plates down from the shelves. He is, Merlin notes, wearing Sperry's. Of course he is.

Merlin already has three of the old tin pitchers in his hands, so he just rolls his eyes and mutters, “Yes, your highness.”

Neither of them talk while they work; the only sound in the hall is the quiet conversation between Sophia and Nimueh in the kitchen. Arthur finishes laying a stack of plates on the table just as Merlin places the last of the pitchers down; they move onto the next tasks without speaking. 

“Forks to the left,” Arthur reminds Merlin, switching the silverware around with an exasperated sigh as he puts a glass at each place.

“I'm _putting_ them on the—oh,” Merlin says, and makes a face. “My other left.” He's trying to get a laugh out of Arthur, to get _something_ , but Arthur just rolls his eyes and moves on to the next table. 

Merlin makes a series of extremely unfortunate faces at Arthur's back when he thinks he's safe, until he catches a glimpse of the serving window out of the corner of his eye and sees Sophia in stitches, watching him. He pulls his tongue back inside his mouth and shrugs at her, ducking his head, but he can't help the little smile tugging his mouth toward his ears.

He's free from dish-scraping duty during dinner, thank God, so he takes a seat next to Leon—far from Arthur, who's at his customary place at the front right table—and lets himself relax. He hasn't even had a full week's worth of meals at Camp Albion, but already he knows Nimueh must be the greatest cook in the country; he's half convinced she uses magic, because there's no way boiled chicken and gravy has any right to taste like it's straight out of a gourmet restaurant. Maybe that's why she and Sophia live in a tiny cabin hidden deep in the woods, completely off the grid: they wouldn't need electricity, after all, if they're witches, and it's a reasonable hypothesis as to why the tomatoes here taste a thousand times better than any he's ever had before. 

“So, Merlin,” Vivian says, nudging him in the side. “Any bets to lay?”

Merlin blinks at her, taking a moment to swallow his bite of biscuit. “What?”

“Bets!” says Gwaine, leaning around Vivian to grin at him. “Cabin assignments in the morning, remember?”

“Programming, too,” Leon reminds them, but Gwaine scoffs. 

“There's never any surprises there. It isn't as if they'll put Merlin on Sports and Games, after all.”

“Or you in Arts and Crafts,” Leon comments. 

Gwaine grins. “They could try.”

“I'd kill you before you ever stepped foot in Monmouth,” Vivian says, very sweetly. “That's my territory.” She looks over at Elena, at the end of the table in the gopher chair. “Elena would help, wouldn't you?”

Elena salutes. “We'll cut your kneecaps off,” she tells Gwaine, exchanging grins with Vivian and ignoring Gwaine's pout. 

“Alright, alright,” Leon says. “I'm table counselor here; less of the killing each other talk, more team bonding.”

“I bet I'm stuck with Arthur for a co-counselor,” Merlin says, glum. “The universe conspires against me like that.” He gets a sympathetic chuckle from Gwaine for that, but Leon is shaking his head.

“Arthur doesn't take a cabin,” he explains. “He shares the director's cabin—”

“Once the CITs get here, he'll have his hands full with them,” Gwaine breaks in. “He won't have time to breathe, let alone supervise a cabin.” 

“He lives with his dad?” Merlin asks; the thought simultaneously inspires a truly satisfying schadenfreude and deep sympathy. He sneaks a glance at the head table, where Uther is surveying the rest of them with narrowed eyes over the top of his water glass. Uther's been the director of Camp Albion for thirty years; Merlin supposes he must do so out of love or loyalty, but he isn't exactly the kind of person one might imagine running a summer camp. Merlin had expected someone warm or at least funny, with a Hawaiian shirt for every day of the week and a passion for sidewalk chalk; Uther looks, in truth, much more suited to a board room or a boot camp, from his precisely trimmed hair to the military-grade creases ironed into his pants. He can't be much fun as a roommate.

“Arthur's gone half the week on camp-outs, anyway,” Leon says, holding his hand out for Merlin's plate to scrape. “Especially with the younger cabins; taking twelve eight-year-olds out for a night in a tent with marshmallows can be...interesting.”

“Do you remember the year all the counselors-in-training snuck out and convinced the girls in Bedivere that there was a bear in the woods?” Gwaine asks, and grabs his plate protectively when Leon reaches for it. “I'm not finished yet!”

Vivian smacks the back of his head. “That was _your_ CIT class, dickbag. And _I_ remember perfectly, because Gwen and I had three tents of screaming girls who didn't sleep all night.”

“Ah,” Gwaine says wistfully, his mouth full. “Those were the good days.” He lets Leon take his plate, stealing the last biscuit from the basket before Elena can carry it back to the serving window. 

Merlin worries at the corner of his napkin—cloth, red, with his name on it, because Nimueh harbors a deep and abiding hatred for paper napkins and waste—and tunes out the conversation. The woods outside the mess hall are beginning to turn dark, the shadows lengthening under the pines; whatever sun was hidden behind the day's clouds has long disappeared over the hills across the lake. The hall itself is bright, cheerily lit under long yellow lamps, and as long as Merlin doesn't look up at the animal heads mounted at either end, it's pretty homey. They're only using the tables nearest the kitchen, and looking around, he almost knows everyone's name—he's almost starting to feel like he might belong here. 

He already knows he'll never measure up to the other counselors. Gwen's been coming to this camp for fifteen years, since she was seven years old, and Leon's been here even longer. Morgana and Arthur were practically born here. Half the staff has grown up at Camp Albion; they're like a giant, weird family with all their in-jokes and shared memories, but with the exception of Arthur, they've all been friendly with Merlin. Maybe he can be the awkward step-child of the family. He'd be happy with that. He's never had any family other than his mother and Gaius; it'd be nice to belong with other people, too.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Uther says, standing in front of the serving window with his hands crossed behind his back. “Most of you know the drill by now. There will be no evening training session; you have free time until eleven. I expect you to use the time productively—remember that your name tags must be ready by Saturday evening. Once you've left the mess hall, Camelot will be out of bounds to anyone who is not Arthur or Morgana, so take everything with you. If you forget your water bottle or your manual, those things will remain forgotten until we begin the morning training session tomorrow. Questions?” He barely pauses before clapping his hands together. “Dismissed!”

Gwen grabs Merlin's arm as he's hanging his napkin up on the board just outside the mess hall. “Hang on,” she says. “Do you have a shirt yet?”

“A camp shirt?” Merlin shakes his head. “Do I need one?”

“Every staff member gets one free shirt every year,” Gwen explains, leading him past the door to the outside. “You'll have to wear it on turnover days, when all the parents are here dropping their kids off. Uther likes us to look like a team.” She stops at a closet directly across from the camp office, jiggling carefully at the handle until Merlin can hear it catch, unlatching. Uther and Arthur are already in the office, both of them looking solemn and talking too quietly for Merlin to hear them through the open window into the hall. He's just about to reach out, teasing at the air currents to carry their words to him, when Gwen elbows him.

“Are you paying attention?” she asks, grinning when he blushes and shakes his head. “I said what size?”

“Oh,” Merlin says. “Um. What does a medium look like?”

She beckons him deeper into the closet—it's bigger than he'd thought, stretching back surprisingly far, and now that he's inside he can see steps that must lead to the attic and more storage space. There are boxes stacked neatly everywhere, but the orderliness of it all just makes it seem overfull, like it shouldn't hold as much as it does. There are sports balls of every kind in a giant basket in one corner and ancient raincoats spilling out of a large box near the ceiling; it all smells like old pine boards and moth balls. 

Gwen pulls a lime green shirt out of a plastic tub she's yanked out onto the floor and holds it up for him. “Here, try this one on—just pull it over your shirt, right, like that.” She narrows her eyes and studies him while he stands there, holding his arms awkwardly out at his sides. “That looks about right. What do you think?”

“Yeah,” Merlin says. “It'll work. Do you, uh—are there other colors? This one's a little...loud.”

“I think you look quite good in the green,” she tells him, but she digs through the box again. “How about blue?”

“Blue sounds fantastic,” he says gratefully, and wriggles out of the other shirt to trade it off. 

“Alright,” Gwen says, when his new shirt is tucked firmly under his arm. “Put your initials on the inside of the bottom hem so no one else confuses it for theirs; I'll check your name off the list. Now scoot.” She pats him on the shoulder and smiles, and he trots obediently out into the gathering night.

He slows his pace once he's out of Camelot, holding the folded shirt out in front of him to examine it more closely. _CAMP ALBION_ it reads in bold print across the chest, and underneath: _The way Camp should be_. He's tracing a finger over the letters when the wind turns, and instead of blowing through the kitchens and carrying the sound of Nimueh muttering, it's catching Arthur as he says, “Leon and Lance have been a good team before; the older boys look up to them. They're a good fit for Cabin Galahad.” 

Merlin slows his steps even more, reaching out with his mind to catch more of the words before they're scattered. 

“We should spread them out,” Morgana says. “They're role models for the newer counselors, too; I think Percy would be good with Leon in Galahad, and we could pair Ewan with Lance in Cabin Gawaine.”

“Lance'll keep the middle school hormones under control there,” Arthur agrees. “George could go the next cabin down, but that means we'll have to move Elyan out of Perceval—into Cador, maybe?”

“Hey, Merlin!” 

Merlin starts at the nearness of the voice, hastily letting go of the wind and nearly tripping over a root in the path as he does so. 

“Thought you might have gotten lost,” Gwaine says, coming up from behind him and slinging an arm over his shoulders. “Come on, there's going to be a game; you won't want to miss this.”

“What kind of game?” Merlin asks, mistrustful. “Is this going to be another game where we're all supposed to run around and hide in mud puddles while you make up the rules?”

“One of these days,” Gwaine says, giving Merlin a friendly shake while they walk, “you are going to appreciate the glory that is Witch Hunter. But nah, this game's more your style, I think.” They're into the cabin area now, and Merlin can see most of the counselors huddled around a cluster of picnic tables near the bath house. “It's magic!”

Merlin can feel himself freezing up at that, his blood slowing down to roar in his ears, because how—he's always been so careful, there's no way—

“You know!” Gwaine says. “Magic? Because you're Merlin?” He laughs, a clear-sounding, delighted guffaw, and Merlin can breathe again; it's just a joke. “You've never heard of Magic: The Gathering? Come on, I'll show you how it's played.”

Merlin tries to follow the explanation, he really does. Lance and Elena are locked in a tense battle, each of them flipping cards in grim silence, but somewhere between convoluted explanations of tapping and “wooberg” and mana and graveyards, he finds himself totally lost. He's pretty sure this is the most complicated card game he's ever seen—a fact which does not endear the game to him. It doesn't help that Vivian and Percy are both hanging over his other shoulder, offering commentary on the game.

“Ooh,” Vivian says as Elena does something inexplicable that involves turning a lot of cards sideways. “Interesting. A bold move.”

“What was bold? What did she do?” Merlin asks. 

“You should have Gwen teach you the basics,” George pipes up from where he's perched at the far end of the picnic table. “She's really good.”

“ _Gwen_ plays this game?” Merlin asks, incredulous. Gwen seems so...well. Normal. He feels immediately guilty for thinking it.

“Gwen's a master,” Vivian says. “She's been playing for years; she's built the best deck I've ever seen.”

“She was runner-up in the regional tournament a few years back,” Lance adds, not looking up from the cards in his hand. “Drove all the nerd boys into a raging froth. It was beautiful.”

Vivian laughs. “I'll bet she did.” 

“Who did what?” Gwen asks, walking up out of the dark to lean against Lancelot's back, examining the game. She taps one of the cards he's holding. “Play that one.” He half-turns in protest, but she pats his shoulder reassuringly, and he lays it down. Elena curses.

“No helping!”

“We were just talking about how you mopped the floor at the tournament,” Vivian says. “Sent all the boys home crying.”

“It was mostly luck,” Gwen says modestly. “They played a tough game.”

“They're all weenies,” Vivian says dismissively. “And whiners, to boot. You should have seen—”

“—Merlin?” Morgana's voice is loud and clear in Merlin's ears, startling him, but no one else moves at all—no one else can hear bodiless voices on the wind. He drifts away from the group a little, picking up a stray stack of cards and perusing them as a cover. The first one is _Drowner of Secrets_. Such a cheerful game, he thinks. There are instructions about tapping and libraries he doesn't understand underneath the illustration, and then an equally indecipherable description in italics beneath. He squints at it, but most of his concentration is wrapped up in a different sort of magic. 

It's easier here to control his magic—or at least, it seems to be. Maybe it's because there's less interference with no one else around; maybe the wild air is just different than in the city, filtered through leaves and bird nests instead of smoke and shouting. Uther sounds like he's right next to Merlin when he says, dismissive, “Well, we have to stick him somewhere. Elyan would keep a close eye on him in Reflections.”

“I think he shows much more potential for PA,” Arthur says. “He'd be wonderful there; he's creative enough to come up with new activities, and the kids will love him.”

“He does have excellent comic timing,” Morgana agrees dryly as Merlin loses the threads of the magic, blinking down at the cards he's holding in shock. 

“Merlin!” Elena calls. “Did you run off with my graveyard?”

“Maybe?” he says, sheepish, showing her the cards. She shakes her head at him in fond resignation and takes them back; he tucks his hands into his armpits and tries to pay attention to either the game or the conversation, but he can't concentrate.

“I'm off for bed,” he says, turning toward his cabin. There's a flurry of waves and a chorus of “Night, Merlin!”s before he shuts the screen door behind him. Even after he's changed and snuggled between the sheets Gaius had lent him from the spare closet in the infirmary, though, he lies awake for a long time, staring at the mesh of George's bunk above him.

*

He doesn't say much the next morning, just lets the excited buzz from everyone else carry him along. It's raining again, and he's wearing a fleece borrowed from Leon because the one sweatshirt he'd brought is wet and useless after being caught in the rain the morning before. He stares as unobtrusively as he can at Arthur all through breakfast. Arthur thinks he's wonderful—well, wonderful at doing something. Arthur thinks he's _creative_. It doesn't fit with the box he's made for Arthur in his head, and that unsettles him.

“You alright, Merlin?” Gwen asks, nudging him with an elbow as they settle in Camelot's Great Hall—an enormous room with tapestries covering the knotty pine walls between the many-paned windows. There's a small stage to the left and a huge stone fireplace at the front, a fire burning merrily away in it against the damp weather; there's no furniture except an untuned piano in one corner and the chairs they've dragged into a crooked circle for the training session. 

“Yeah,” Merlin says, mustering up a smile. “Course I am. It's just the weather.”

“We've had some summers it's rained the whole time,” Gwen says, and at his horrified expression, she tries to hastily backtrack. “Not every day! Well, most days. Or at least not all day, anyway. It was fine! None of the campers ever complained; they had just as much fun as ever.” 

Merlin imagines it: everything damp all the time, running from the cabin to Camelot in the mud, taking showers in the cold concrete of the bath house...

“I'm sure this summer will be different,” Gwen says bracingly. Merlin makes a face, but before he can challenge her for evidence to back up that claim, Arthur stands up, calling their attention. 

“It's that time,” he says, taking the folder Morgana hands him. “The morning you've all been waiting for; the moment of reckoning; the day of judgment. Are you all ready?”

“What was that?” Gwaine says, cupping a hand around his ear and giving a giant fake yawn. “I think I dozed off there, I'm so bored.”

“There's still time to put you in Arts and Crafts,” Arthur says, pointing at him with the folder and grinning. “Just try me.”

“Over my dead body!” Vivian calls out, and they're all still laughing when Uther walks in. 

“Something amusing?” he asks. He doesn't raise his voice, but it echoes impressively around the hall anyway, silencing even Gwaine. His steps are measured; he paces around the circle, looking hard at each of them—Merlin can't quite help but shrink back when Uther looks at him—and ends up by Arthur's shoulder. “I find nothing humorous about this. Arthur?”

“Let's start with program area assignments,” Arthur says, impassive again. 

Gwen gives Merlin's elbow a little squeeze, and shares a small smile with him as Arthur calls Leon up as the Sports and Games leader and then, one by one, the small group of staff he'll lead. Merlin knows his chances of being called are zero, but that doesn't stop him from letting out a relieved little breath when Morgana stands up to name her new waterfront staff. 

“Camp Craft,” Arthur announces when she's finished. “You all know by now that Gwen will be leading CC again this year.” There's a smattering of applause anyway, and Gwen smiles so widely that Merlin's genuinely concerned about her cheeks cracking. “Joining her this year will be Lance, Gwaine, Ewan, and Mary!” Merlin claps along with everyone else, but he can't deny there's a little pang when he doesn't hear his own name; out of the staff, Gwen's taken the most time to help him out with the little things everyone else seems to already know. He would have liked to have her as his supervisor.

Arthur calls out Vivian's crew for Arts and Crafts, Elyan's for Reflections—Merlin can't help but tense a little at that; it's not that he dislikes Elyan, but leading self-reflection and 'personal development' activities is the last thing he wants to do right now—before flipping to the last page in the packet he's holding.

“Mithian's back as the Performing Arts poo-bah,” he says, “with George, Freya, and Merlin. And that's all we have for you—congratulations, everyone.”

“Leaders, you have a few minutes to confer with your staff,” Uther says. “You'll begin developing your activity plans later today; Arthur will need to review them before the campers arrive on Sunday.”

“Take fifteen minutes,” Arthur adds. “We still have a lot to get through.” When he's finished, and everyone begins splitting off into their groups, Uther pulls him over to stand near the fireplace. Merlin would love to listen in on the conference—they both look solemn—but Mithian is waving them all up onto the stage. They sit in a tight little circle, their knees touching, and she beams at them. 

“This is going to be a _fantastic_ summer,” she says, grabbing at Freya's shoulder. “I have so many new ideas, and we had some new hats donated to the costume closet—they're old and full of flowers, and _amazing_.”

“I joined an improv group this year,” George volunteers. “I have a _lot_ of new material.” 

“Do you have any performance background?” Freya asks, turning to look at Merlin.. “It's alright if you don't; no one cares if you can't act or don't want to. Balderdash is a word game and it's one of our most popular offerings.”

Merlin reaches up to palm the back of his neck nervously. “I know a few magic tricks,” he says. “Nothing fancy, I mean, just card tricks, a couple of easy illusions.” 

“That's wonderful!” Mithian says, delighted. “We've never had anyone who knew any magic before. You'll have to co-lead a few activities before leading them on your own, but that sounds like a perfect way to start once you do. Now, Freya and George have both worked here before, but do you understand how the schedule works?”

“A little,” Merlin says, letting his hand slip down to his shoulder. “There are, what, six activity periods every day?”

Mithian nods encouragingly. “That's right. The first two days, all the cabins will travel together to their activities; we usually do the same activity for everyone. After that, the kids get to sign up for whatever they want to do. We like to offer two activities for each period, to give them a little variety, but all of us get one free period a day—we just switch off. Easy, right?”

“Right.”

“So we'll all do the first two days together, and then you'll co-lead with one of us for a bit to get a feel for things; you'll be an old pro at all this in no time.”

“I'll show you the costume closet later,” George tells him, pointing at a door on one side of the stage “We keep all our supplies in there.”

“The costume closet is George's domain,” Mithian says, giving George a fond pat on his knee. “He keeps it immaculately organized.”

“Time's up!” Arthur yells. Merlin looks around to find Arthur standing by himself in the center of the chair circle. Uther's nowhere to be seen. “Come on back, or don't you want to know what cabins you're in?”

It's probably the fastest Merlin's ever seen his coworkers move; they're all sitting back in their chairs in what seems like seconds, everyone sitting up straight and watching Arthur intently. George and a few others are actually leaning in, perched at the edge of their seats, as if being physically closer to Arthur might make him call their names faster.

“As you may have already guessed,” Arthur says. “We've had to rearrange the girls' cabins a bit this year, since Cabin Gareth's roof was damaged over the winter.”

“Tree branch went straight through the roof during a snowstorm,” Gwen whispers to Merlin. “Some of us came to camp this spring to try to clean it up, but they'll have to put a whole new roof on it before it's ready for the kids.”

“We've reordered the cabin age groups to keep the hormones under control,” Arthur says, his voice dry. “Otherwise Cabins Gaheris and Geraint would have been next to each other, and we all know what sort of chaos _that_ would have caused.”

“Those are usually the cabins with twelve- to fourteen-year-old girls and boys,” Gwen explains at Merlin's confused look. “Bad idea to have them side-by-side.”

“So, then,” Arthur continues. “The girls cabins now go—in order from youngest to oldest—Cabin Pellinore, then Tristan, Lancelot, Bors, Gaheris, and Bedivere. Gentlemen, we've only switched the two oldest cabins, so you'll still have the youngest campers in Cabin Kay as usual, then Gawaine, Perceval, Cador, and Geraint; Galahad will be the oldest cabin this year. Got it?”

There's a chorus of assent, and Arthur nods, opening his folder. “Ladies first, shall we? Morgana, would you do the honors?”

“With pleasure,” Morgana says, standing to take the pages he offers her and turning to face the circle. “Let's start with the youngest. Cabin Pellinore will feature a real dream team—Gwen and Elena!” She doesn't give them time to applaud, just keeps reading off the names while Gwen leans around Lance to give Elena a high-five. Merlin tries his best to concentrate, but the names blur together despite his efforts, and his palms are sweating. He's never even had a pet before, and it's hitting him that someone is about to put him in charge of a group of children and expect him to keep them alive for a week. For _seven_ weeks. How did anyone think this was ever a good idea? 

“Alright, gentlemen,” Arthur says when Morgana's finished, taking the list back from her. “Ready?” He doesn't wait for them to tell him yes or no, just barrels forward. “Merlin and Gwaine, you've got the little guys in Cabin Kay.” He looks up from the paper just long enough to add: “Good luck, we've got a pretty young crew coming in this year,” before moving on.

It's anticlimactic, all things considered. Maybe it's shock or something, but the only thought in Merlin's head is that he can't remember the time he had even a conversation with a seven-year-old. He wonders if they'll still be in the biting stage, or if they'll have grown out of it. Gwaine, at least, is doing an elaborate seated dance across the circle which mostly seems to involve fist pumps; it's a little comforting to watch his enthusiasm, and when he flashes a grin and a double thumbs-up at Merlin, Merlin can't help but give him a thumbs-up right back.

“So,” Gwaine says, after Arthur's finished and sent them off to bond for a few minutes, “Merlin! We are going to have an epic, epic cabin, right?”

“Right,” Merlin says; the word twists around in his mouth a little and turns into more of a question than he'd intended, but Gwaine either ignores it or doesn't notice.

“I love having the youngest kids,” Gwaine tells him. “Kayter Tots are the best; they're all so impressionable, and they don't sass you.”

“Sass?” Merlin says, raising an eyebrow. He doesn't ask about 'Kayter Tots'—everything at this camp seems to have at least one nickname, and this one doesn't seem too bad, in the scheme of things.

“Well alright, they'll talk back at you, but at least they're funny about it. They lose all sense of humor by the time they hit middle school.” Gwaine makes a disgusted noise, presumably to express exactly how low his opinion of middle-schoolers is. “I'm thinking definitely a dinosaur theme for our welcome sign and the cabin chore chart, what do you think? Can you draw any dinosaurs?”

“I can give it a shot,” Merlin says. “How hard can it be?”

“That's the spirit,” Gwaine says approvingly. “I'll get some markers; we can start during the next training session. It's only Safe Camp stuff, boring as hell.”

“Safe Camp?”

Gwaine makes a dismissive gesture, leading Merlin out to the storage closet in the hallway where Gwen had given Merlin his camp shirt. “Don't touch the children,” he explains, turning the light on and rummaging through a box near the door, pulling out a selection of Crayola markers. “Don't expose yourself to them, don't look at them while they're changing, don't shower at the same time, that kind of stuff. We have to be certified as trained before camp starts, because God knows we'd all be molesters otherwise.”

“Oh,” Merlin says. Jesus, he hadn't even thought of that. There's only the one bath house for everyone; what if he accidentally walks out of the shower one day and his towel slips? Will he be marked down as a sex offender for life? He takes the armful of colored construction paper Gwaine hands him. “Um, how do you handle the shower stuff and everything?”

“Easy,” Gwaine says, picking out two more pink markers with evident satisfaction before turning the light back off and hustling Merlin back out of the closet and toward their chairs. “We shower before the first bell in the morning; they go between the first bell and the breakfast bell. Or, if you're not Arthur want a few more minutes of sleep like a normal person, you can go during your free period. Now here—” he hands Merlin a bunch of markers. “Show me your dinosaur skills.” 

The morning goes fast after that, even with Uther looming more threateningly than usual during the Safe Camp session; it doesn't feel long at all before they've eaten lunch and been sent off to prepare their cabins. The guys have all been sharing a couple of the cabins all week, and Merlin's the first to finish packing his things back into his suitcase; he turns down Leon's offer of help, and hauls it down to Cabin Kay himself, picking his way carefully down the slippery path.

Kay is comfortably in the middle of the boys' cabins, sandwiched between two towering pine trees and directly in front of the boy's side of the bath house. There's a boulder to the left of the small porch, and a worn clothesline strung along the right side of the cabin. It's stopped raining, but everything is still soaked; Merlin nearly slips on the wooden steps up to the door. The air is wet and green, with a spice and a depth to it from the evergreens and the mast that's gathered all around the cabin on the ground. Merlin can feel it filling his lungs, coating them like something liquid, something tangible he can taste on the tip of his tongue—something that doesn't fade even after he steps inside the cabin. It's all bare pine boards and exposed beams, like everything else at the camp, with long windows covered now by shutters. There are six bunkbeds neatly lined up in two rows, three on each side, with two sturdy twin beds pushed length-wise against the back wall. 

Merlin sets his suitcase down by the left-hand bed before crossing the room to the curtained-off annex next to the other bed—their counselor room, he assumes. There's barely room inside it for a narrow bureau and a tiny table with a chair, but it's nice enough. The curtain has faded rocket ships on it. Everything has a thin layer of dust on it; when he looks up, there are just enough cobwebs to give him the creeps. 

“Oi, Merlin!” Gwaine yells from outside. “Give me a hand, will you?”

Gwaine has more than one suitcase with him; he's got a handcart with a trunk, a suitcase, and a couple of duffle bags. He's carrying two pillows under his arm. “I'll get the trunk,” he tells Merlin. “Just help me with the duffles, will you? It's starting to rain again.”

Together, they get all of Gwaine's things safely inside before the sprinkling rain turns steadily heavier again, and neither of them talk much as they set about cleaning the cabin. The rain is loud against the roof while they sweep out the dust and cobwebs; louder still when they finish bleaching the thin bunk mattresses and start setting up their own things. Merlin fits his clothes into one drawer of the bureau and makes his bed with careful hospital corners, since the sheets he's borrowed tend to slip free unless he's tucked them in securely. A few blankets and a pillow—also from the infirmary—complete his unpacking, and he slides his suitcase under his bed before propping his pillow against the wall and leaning back to watch Gwaine, who's dumped the clothes from his bags into the remaining drawers and now has his trunk open at the foot of his bed. He's got a bunch of pictures spread out on the mattress, and he's taping them up one by one in a haphazard fashion: Merlin doesn't think a one of them is level. Most of them must be of Gwaine's friends—Merlin even recognizes a few of them as obviously taken at the camp—but there are a few magazine pages with mountaintops and wildebeests, and, inexplicably, three pages that look like they've been torn out of a cookbook.

“You didn't bring any pictures?” Gwaine asks, noticing that Merlin's watching him. “It says right in the packet they mailed you. The wall gets pretty bare without them.”

“I didn't—” Merlin starts, and catches himself. “I didn't have time to print any off before I left.”

“Hmm,” Gwaine says. “You can take a look through these if you want.” He digs through his trunk, pulling out a few magazines with things like 'THE BEST OF THIS YEAR'S GEAR' and 'BACKPACKING THROUGH THE 100-MILE WILDERNESS' emblazoned across the front, offering them to Merlin. “There's some cool pictures in here.”

“Nah,” Merlin says, crossing his hands over his stomach. “I'm good, thanks.” 

Gwaine shrugs, but he doesn't press the issue. “You want to keep working on the chore chart? Leave blanks on one side—we'll tape the kids' names in week by week—but the list of chores is there, so just write them across the top and finish the grid.”

The rest of the afternoon passes comfortably; the rain even stops, and they even get a peek of sunshine at the end of it, as they're heading down to Camelot for dinner, which brightens everyone's mood even further.

Merlin never sees Gwaine talking to her, but when he's walking back from the bath house that night, toothbrush still stuck in his mouth, Gwen catches him before he can climb up the steps to his cabin. 

“Hey, Merlin,” she says. “Will you do me a favor?”

“Sure,” he mumbles, garbled. He pulls his toothbrush out of his mouth. “What's up?”

“I've been making paper cranes,” she says, holding out a shoebox. “You're supposed to make a thousand of them, and I have a few extra. Would you take them off my hands?”

Merlin hesitates. “It must have taken you a long time to make a thousand cranes.”

“Oh, I haven't finished,” she says, holding the box out further toward him. “I'm not going to use these ones, though. I thought maybe you'd like to hang them in your cabin; the kids would like them.” 

“Gwen—”

“Consider it my welcome gift.”

Merlin doesn't like it, but Gwen's standing there with the box, looking as unmovable as the boulder they're standing next to; after a failed attempt to stare her down, he takes the box with a reluctant hand. 

“There's some string in there, too,” she tells him, smiling. “Duct tape works best to hang them; it doesn't come unstuck in the damp.”

“Thanks,” he says quietly, and she pulls him into a quick hug. 

“Go on now, it's late.”

That makes him roll his eyes at her. “Yes, ma'am.” 

He doesn't open the box until he's safe in his counselor room with the ancient lamp on the table turned on and glowing warm through the scalloped pink shade. There have to be twenty cranes in the box, all beautifully folded; the colors are wild and their wings are folded gracefully back, and he hangs each of them carefully from the beams over his bed with the red thread Gwen had tucked in the box. He can still see them after he turns the lights off, their outlines twisting above him; they look like tiny dragons more than birds, like there's a little flock of them watching over him, protecting him.

*

Saturday passes in a blur. Merlin finds two watercolor paintings on green construction paper in his mailbox in the office—he suspects Vivian, though she denies all knowledge—and finishes his name tag and the little biography he's supposed to tack to the door of the cabin to reassure parents that he isn't an ax murderer or anything. It's overcast, but the rain holds off, and everyone runs around all day from one side of camp to the other, making sure everything is perfect for the campers; Merlin barely has time to even consider feeling nervous about the next day until it dawns, bright and warm and clear for the first time in a week.

“Listen up,” Uther says when they're all gathered in the Great Hall for their first staff meeting. They're paired off by cabin, carefully making notes on the camper list—who has a peanut allergy, who needs an EpiPen with them at all times; everything not confidential they might need to watch out for—and Merlin's letting Gwaine write on their list with some sort of code, because he doesn't think he can grip a pen. “You all know we're up for accreditation again this year. Your behavior must be without reproach at all times, all summer. I expect you to be professionals at all times; no funny business will be tolerated. The ACA representatives will come for the formal visit later in the summer, but you will conduct yourselves as if any person you meet all summer might be reporting directly to the ACA main office.”

Merlin leans over to whisper to Gwaine, “ACA?”

“American Camping Association,” Gwaine whispers back. “They come through every few years to re-certify us as a good camp that meets their standards. It's a shit-ton of paperwork and a pain in the ass for everyone.”

“In that light,” Uther's saying, stern-faced, “I'm taking this opportunity to remind you of the staff fraternization policy.” Merlin exchanges a look with Gwaine, who looks more amused than anything else. “Review the rules in your handbook; do not allow anything to become a distraction. You are here to work. This is a serious job, and if I hear of anyone taking it lightly, be assured there will be consequences.” 

Merlin's been listening to enough conversations among his coworkers that he thinks he has the official double-speak down: romance isn't strictly forbidden, but they aren't supposed to be public about it. Campers aren't supposed to know, although Morgana had kept them all in stitches for half an hour with her stories about the oldest girls and the elaborate stories they created every summer about their counselors' private lives.

Arthur's standing up now, checking his watch. “The first cars will be pulling in soon,” he says. “Gwen, Leon, I want you working the merch booth; don't forget to pull those frisbees out of storage. Kara, Drea, you're with Morgana at the waterfront for swimming tests. Everyone else, you'll need to have one staff member of your cabin at registration and one in the cabin with the campers at all times until all your campers are here. Be friendly, don't just stand in a group talking to each other. Merlin,” he calls out as everyone stands up in a flurry of stretching and spilled papers, “Gwaine; I need to talk to you both for a moment, please.”

Merlin looks at Gwaine quizzically, but Gwaine just shrugs, leading the way to where Arthur stands waiting for them.

“You've got three A.U.P. kids,” Arthur tells them briskly while everyone else files out. “Numbers five, thirty-six, and forty-one on your camper list. Ask their parents privately how the kids have been doing, and whether or not you should take preemptive measures.”

Gwaine's making marks busily on their list; Merlin watches, bemused, but stays quiet—he'll ask Gwaine later. Arthur hasn't gone out of his way recently to make life hard for Merlin, but Merlin doesn't trust him in the least.

“Also,” Arthur says, lowering his voice, “I need to give you a heads up on one camper. Number seventeen.” Merlin cranes his head over Gwaine's shoulder, reading the name Gwaine points to: _Mordred Ismere_. Next to the name, there are check marks under each of the seven week-long sessions of the summer.

“He was in my cabin last year,” Gwaine remarks; “I can't remember him causing any trouble.” Arthur frowns.

“It's unusual for such a young camper to stay for the whole summer. Just keep an eye on him; his parents had a falling out with his aunt.”

Merlin can't help but snort at that—Arthur, of all people, doesn't seem like the type to gossip, even if this is a pretty weak attempt at anything truly juicy—and Arthur's frown folds more deeply into his face.

“His aunt is Morgause—”

“The director at Camp Orcades?” Gwaine looks incredulous. “It's directly across the lake,” he explains to Merlin. “She isn't exactly friendly to us here.”

“Yes,” Arthur says quellingly. “And she's in the rotation for our ACA visit this year. I don't know what effect that'll have on number seventeen, but I want you both to keep an eye on him.”

Gwaine salutes, and Arthur gives them both a short nod. “Get out there, then. Merlin, where's your name tag?”

“Oh,” Merlin says, fumbling. “It's—I left it where I was sitting.”

“Make sure you have it on before you go outside.” Arthur's curt, and Merlin makes a face at the wall after Arthur leaves. 

“Man,” Gwaine exhales as they clatter down the steps to the open area in front of Camelot. “Camp drama is the _best_. You'll have to come to the ACA conference in March, Merlin; it's _awesome_.”

Merlin does not say he isn't sure at this point that he's even going to last the summer, let alone sign up for something extra, but there's no need to keep the conversation going—Gwaine's already waving at someone in the line of campers and parents already waiting.

“I'll take the cabin,” Gwaine says; “I can handle the A.U.P.s. Plus, parents love me. You alright to greet them here and bring them up with their things?”

Merlin tries to disguise as much of his bewilderment as possible. He's not sure how successful he is. “Sure.”

“Perfect.” Gwaine claps him on the shoulder. “Here's our first camper, then. Hey, Julius!”

Julius is an anxious-looking boy with mousy hair and a green shirt with cartoon lizards on it; he lights up when he sees Gwaine. “Big G!”

“Hey, little man, how's life?” Gwaine says, exchanging a complicated fist bump with him. Julius nearly loses his balance and his glasses during it, but Gwaine catches him by the elbow, and his glasses dangle safely from a neon cord around his neck. “Mr. and Mrs. Borden, it's great to see you again. Let's get you checked in, and we can take your stuff up to the cabin; how's that sound, Julius?”

“Awesome!” Julius declares, and Gwaine shepherds them off with a wink back at Merlin.

“Right,” Merlin mutters, squaring his shoulder. “I can do this.” He has his shirt on like armor, and a giant laminated name tag hanging around his neck like a shield. He had Vivian draw dragons around the letters of his name. He can absolutely do this. 

It's not hard to learn the flow of things. Uther is stationed at the registration table directly in front of Camelot, checking off names as the campers arrive; Leon and Morgana are a little ways to the right of him at a different table with t-shirts and frisbees and magnets spread in front of them along with a sign advertising the camp scholarship raffle. The rest of the staff is spread throughout the open space between Camelot and the small dirt parking lot at the head of the long camp driveway, shaking hands with parents and hugging returning campers—there's a happy loudness around all of them, rising up into the trees with the warm air. 

Arthur's everywhere. He's with Uther at registration, glad-handing the parents and smiling at the kids, but he's also under the bell in the middle of the space, shooing the counselors gathered there out to mingle; he's giving out fistbumps and hugs to everyone under the age of fifteen. Merlin gets the hang of his job relatively quickly, coming forward when Uther calls him and introduces him to another camper in his cabin, but he's already having trouble keeping track of the names—whereas Arthur seems to know _everyone_. 

It's Arthur who introduces him to Mordred. “Merlin's one of our new counselors this year,” Arthur tells Mordred as he introduces them. 

“Hey,” Merlin says, smiling as brightly as he can and sticking out a hand. Mordred just looks at it, unresponsive for long enough that Merlin has time to feel truly, terribly awkward before Mordred's father nudges him and Mordred takes a limp hold of three of Merlin's fingers and allows Merlin to shake his hand once.

“Where's Aglain?” Mordred asks Arthur, ignoring Merlin. “He was my counselor last year; I wanted to show him my new deck.”

“Aglain didn't come back to camp this year,” Arthur says, and Mordred frowns. 

“But _why_?”

“Sometimes people can't come to camp for a summer,” Arthur explains. “But Gwaine's your counselor again, how about that for luck?” Mordred looks slightly mollified, and Arthur crouches down to lean in close, nodding with Merlin. “Keep an eye on Merlin, will you? You're an old hand now, think you can show him the ropes?”

Mordred pushes his bottom lip out, but it's easy to tell he's pleased with the 'responsibility'. “I guess.”

“Is this all your stuff, Mordred?” Merlin asks, keen to change the subject. He doesn't need any nine-year-olds showing him the _ropes_. Jesus. “Let's get a cart and bring it up to the cabin.” 

“Fine,” Mordred says. “I can't push it though, because of my asthma. Are we first? My bunk had better be open.”

“I'm sure there are still some good bunks left,” Merlin says, hefting Mordred's suitcase into the smallest handcart.

Mordred gives him a scornful look. “I don't want a good bunk. I want _my_ bunk. Careful!” He leaps at Merlin, who freezes until he realizes that Mordred isn't attacking him, just trying to grab the box in Merlin's hand. 

“These are my Magic cards,” Mordred informs him, cradling the large black box close to his chest and glaring at Merlin balefully. “You can't just throw them around.” 

Apparently, Magic: The Gathering is going to be one of those things Merlin's doomed to pretend is cool and understandable. For seven weeks. Yep, he thinks; it's going to be an awesome summer. 

By the time registration is over and the last tearful parent has been pushed into the car by their impatient kids, Merlin and Gwaine have seven tiny boys gathered around the picnic table nearest their cabin, alternately staring at them and sticking their fingers in each other's ears. Mordred's their oldest camper; Andrew, who's barely seven, is their youngest. 

“Alright squad!” Gwaine says, rubbing his hands together. “You're all the luckiest campers here, because _this_ —” he points to their cabin, “—is the best cabin here, and me and Merlin are definitely the best counselors.” He leans in close, conspiratorial. “All the other campers don't know what they're missing, so we'll have to be really nice to them all week; can you guys handle that?”

They all nod so vigorously Merlin's half-afraid one of them will actually dislocate their neck; Julius actually gets his whole body into it, and nearly falls off the bench. 

“Awesome.” Gwaine grins. “Now, as the best cabin, we have some expectations, right, Merlin?”

“We sure do.”

“You guys probably know all of this,” Gwaine says to the campers, “but we're going to go over it all anyway, just in case. Merlin, what do you think one of our cabin expectations is?”

Merlin's caught off-guard for no good reason—it's not like this is hard; they'd even gone over all the points they wanted to cover that morning before the staff meeting—and he stumbles over his words before he manages, “Respecting everyone's space?”

“Bingo,” Gwaine says, shooting a finger-gun at him. Merlin feels a ridiculous relief, and writes it down on the sheet of butcher paper he'd laid on the picnic table before they'd started. “What else?” Gwaine asks. 

“No iPods!” Julius chimes in, and Gwaine leans over to give him a high five. 

“Right you are, little man; this is a technology-free camp. Pretty cool, right?”

Merlin's perfectly happy to let Gwaine lead the group through the expectations, concentrating on copying everything down onto the paper while all the boys practically leap out of their seats to answer. Well...almost all the boys. Maybe he's just a little oversensitive, after Arthur mentioning Mordred to them, but Mordred doesn't seem nearly as enthusiastic as the other kids; he barely cracks a smile, even when Gwaine tells them that they all have to bathe at least three times during the week—and that no, the daily swimming class doesn't count as bathing.

“With soap,” Gwaine stipulates. “Lots of it. And don't let any of the older boys tell you that spraying smelly stuff on you is just as good as a shower. They don't have any idea what they're talking about.”

“What if it's really good smelly stuff?”

“What if it's _magic_ stuff?”

“What if it's made of _bug guts_?”

“Doesn't count,” Gwaine rules. “Soap and water only, little dudes.”

The bell by Camelot rings just as they're finishing, and they herd the boys down toward main camp, the campers yelling and jumping the whole way down. 

“They're...energetic,” Merlin says to Gwaine, because he doesn't want to say _I'm overwhelmed_.

“This is nothing. We had a kid one year who ran everywhere. Tripped over rocks and tree roots, landed on his face, and got up and kept on running, his knees all bloody. Arthur finally made us put him on a leash.”

Merlin stares at him. “A leash?”

“Yeah, you know—one of those kid leashes crazy parents use at the mall? He pulled like hell against it, but at least he didn't give himself brain damage falling off of something.”

“That's ridiculous,” Merlin says as they round the back corner of Camelot. They don't go in the office door with their campers—Gwen had told him campers aren't allowed in or out that door. Instead, there's a long porch that runs along the back of the building overlooking the lake, with steps up to wide double doors, and the whole camp gathers there before meals and meetings. Arthur's waiting for them at the top of the stairs.

“Are you all ready to sing for your supper?” he calls out as the last cabin groups round the corner, and the campers cheer. Arthur cups a hand around his ear. “I said, are you all ready to sing for your supper?”

The cheer this time is even louder, but Arthur shakes his head. “Gwen, I think they're all asleep. Why don't you come help me wake them up?”

“Do Squash!” one of the older girls yells as Gwen jogs up the steps, but Arthur shakes his head. 

“Maybe a little too complicated for the first day,” he says. “What about...three chartreuse buzzards?” He and Gwen strike a pose that looks like they're about to sing 'walk like an Egyptian', and Arthur yells, “This is a repeat-after-me song!”

“This is a repeat-after-me song!” the campers roar back, and Merlin's—once again—a beat behind everyone else.

“Three chartreuse buzzards!” Arthur and Gwen sing, the campers echoing them and copying every single ridiculous dance move. It almost looks well-choreographed, Merlin thinks, doing his best to follow along; the song is obviously a favorite for the returning campers. 

_Three chartreuse buzzards_ , they sing.  
 _Sitting in a dead tree! Sitting in a dead tree!  
Oh look! One has flown aaaa-way! What aaaa shame!_

For a moment, he thinks that might be it, but the song starts all over again, this time with only two buzzards. Chartreuse buzzards. Who the hell comes up with these songs? He thinks it's over again when the last buzzard flies away, but instead the buzzards start coming _back_ , and all the dance moves change, and it's all he can do to follow the words and the movements at the same time without falling over. They'd learned some of the songs over staff training, but he's already forgotten all the stupid lyrics; he knows pretty soon he's going to have to lead them himself, and he also knows it is going to be a disaster. There's too much singing at this camp: they sing to get into meals, they sing to be dismissed; they sing everywhere they can get away with it. It's not a good place for someone as tone-deaf as Merlin is. 

Thankfully, the dinner bell rings before they can start a third round of the damn buzzards, and Arthur cuts them off with an exaggerated swoop of his arms. 

“Before we go into dinner, who can tell me some of our mess hall rules?” he asks, and half the campers shoot their hands up into the air. “Jessica!”

“Eat your food with a knife and fork, not like a lollipop!” she calls, and Arthur nods and points to someone else.

“Matthew!”

“No elbows on the table!”

“Ashley!”

“Don't say _yuck_ , say, _No thanks, I wouldn't care for any_!”

Arthur keeps going, and Merlin marvels at how excited the kids seem to be about the rules. When he was growing up, his mother couldn't have paid him to keep his elbows off the table, and yet here these seventy-odd campers are, yelling out rules right and left like someone's offered to pay them in candy for knowing them.

“Good enough,” Arthur says at last. “It's the first night of camp, so I'm going to invite the ladies and gentlemen of Bedivere and Galahad in first, to be our gofers. Hang on, though—counselors, come on in and take up your positions.” 

Merlin follows Gwaine in, remembering just in time to grab his napkin as he enters the mess hall. The pause means all the free seats at the ends of the tables are taken, and he's left taking a middle seat at the front of the hall, one table down from Arthur's usual spot. Morgana's at the other designated counselor spot, standing behind the chair at the end of the table near the window, and she gives him a nod when he lays his napkin over the back of his chair. 

“You ready for this?” she asks him, and he swallows. He's almost sure Morgana is nicer than Arthur, but none of that means she isn't intimidating to the point of possibly being evil. 

“Probably not.”

“You'll be fine,” she says, as the first campers enter the mess. “Pour the water into the glasses now, so they can't pretend they've drunk a glass before they go for the sugar juice. And stop making that face; they can smell fear.”

Merlin gulps, but he pours the water as instructed.

He's pleasantly surprised when his table fills quickly—he'd had flashbacks of gym class, and being the last table picked—and two of his campers sit make a beeline for him, arguing over who gets the empty chair next to him. There's only one chair left when Mordred comes up to stand quietly behind it.

“Hey, Mordred,” he says, because he remembers this from training. “Julius and Andrew are already here, and there's only two campers from a cabin allowed at a table. It looks like Gwaine has some room left, though; why don't you try his table?”

Mordred stares at him, long enough that Merlin starts getting uncomfortable, but in the end he just turns without saying anything and joins Arthur's table. Merlin tries to hide his sigh of relief, and smiles at the little girl who takes his last free chair instead. 

Her name, he finds out when they introduce themselves after sitting down, is Maddie Jane, and that's all he finds out. She doesn't say another word, and he's so busy trying to keep the rest of the table under control that he can't try to have a conversation just with her. He does notice, though, how quickly she eats, as if the food might disappear, and when they run out of bread rolls for the second time, he sends the gofer at the end of his table up to the serving window for illicit thirds; when the basket comes back, he makes sure to offer it to Maddie first. 

Arthur catches it when he sends the gofer up—Merlin has a feeling that Arthur catches everything—and gives him a sour look until Merlin cuts his eyes at Maddie, all frizzy hair and huge eyes. Arthur's expression doesn't exactly soften, but it loses some of its edge, and he doesn't try to interrupt anything or tell Merlin off in the middle of dinner. Merlin's going to count that as a win.

Morgana stops him after the meal, when their table's dismissed from the mess. “It's hard, sometimes,” she says, catching lightly at his elbow while he's hanging his napkin up. “It's great when kids tell us camp is the best week of their whole year, you know? But it sucks too, to know they mean it.” 

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Merlin says, without looking at her. “I've got to meet my cabin before they run off like wild boys into the trees.”

“Too late for that,” Morgana says, flicking her fingers at him in dismissal, and he runs outside to find half his campers close to tears because one of the older boys had told them their cabin was haunted by an evil witch who lived in the floorboards and would chop off their feet in the night.

He manages to avert that crisis, but the rest of the evening is a rocky one. Andrew and Samuel both cry when Gwaine sends them to brush their teeth; Damien refuses to change into his pajamas. Charlie's forgotten to _bring_ pajamas—Merlin has to walk him through the dark to the infirmary, where Gaius gives them a spare set out of last year's lost and found which are too big but which Charlie falls in love with because they have the Incredible Hulk printed all over them. Mordred doesn't give them any direct trouble, but he sits in his bunk and glares at everyone, whispering what Merlin suspects are less-than-helpful comments to the other boys. By the time Merlin and Gwaine have them all in bed, Merlin is exhausted enough that he knows he's going to be out the minute he lies down. 

“Hey,” he says quietly, poking his head into the counselor room where Gwaine's got his feet up on the table and his nose in a magazine. “I know we're not supposed to be out of our cabins the first night, but—”

“I've got you covered,” Gwaine says, lowering the top of his magazine just enough that he can see Merlin over the top of it. “Go call your girlfriend.”

“ _Not_ my girlfriend.”

“Boyfriend, then.” Gwaine shrugs. “You get the best signal on the lakeshore, over by the rocks. Stand on the picnic table and turn your head to the left; I've gotten two bars there before.” 

“...Thanks,” Merlin says, because so far he's been trying to work the signal on the kitchen steps, but it cuts out half the time before he's finished.

As promised, the signal is solid on the picnic table, once Merlin finds the right position. He has to twist his torso around pretty strangely, but it's the clearest he's heard his mother's voice since he came to camp.

“Hi, mom.”

“Merlin!” Her voice is bright, happy, with no hint of a rasp; she must have had a good day. “How are you? Uncle Gaius said your campers came today.”

“Yeah, they're a fun group. I think it's going to be a good week. How's Aunt Billie?” Billie isn't his aunt, at least by blood, but she's the closest thing they have to family at home, and anyway, his mother's always called her Aunt Billie; he doesn't think he could ever call her anything else. 

“Oh, she's fine. She keeps making all these noises about fattening me up.” 

“She's a good cook.”

“I'll have her send you some of those cookies you like so much. You need fattening more than I do.”

“That'd be great, mom.”

They listen to the silence between them, for a minute; an advantage of the kitchen steps, Merlin thinks, is that he doesn't have to worry about carrying a conversation beyond the first basic pleasantries. All he's wanted since he arrived at Albion is to ask when he can go back home, when everything will be back to normal, but he knows better than that. So he calls, just to hear his mother's voice, as if he might be able to tell something's wrong from the tone of her voice or the number of times she coughs. The only thing he can really do is guess, and it's maddening; he never hates the camp so much as he does in the evening, with the loons starting up their creepy song and his mother's voice tinny in his ear, impossible to read this many hundreds of miles away.

“We're just sitting down for dinner now,” his mother says. “I should go. Behave yourself, Merlin.”

“Always do,” he says. He thinks about saying _I love you_ , like he does every night, but just like every other night, he's quiet until he hears her hang up the phone. 

He turns his cell phone off before he slips it into his pocket, and he stares out at the dark lake for a long time before the night chill grows enough to make him shiver, and he trudges back up the slow path to his cabin.

*

It's noon the next day before Gwaine discovers the wet spot in Sam's bed.

“A.U.P.,” he mutters to Merlin as they walk their campers down to Sports and Games after the post-lunch rest period. “I'll change it; I've got this period free.” 

“So do I,” Merlin says. “What the hell is an 'auwp'?”

“A-U-P-B-W-S,” Gwaine explains, stopping just within sight of the SG staff and waving the campers on ahead. “Means bedwetter, but we use the code so the other kids won't know.”

“What does it stand for?”

Gwaine shrugs. “No clue. Morgana knows, but she won't tell anyone what it means. Come on, I'll show you how it works.”

The system turns out to be uncomplicated: a series of sheets, plastic, and discreetly hidden pads to ensure maximum security and ease of clean-up with minimum risk of anyone else in the cabin catching wise to their cabinmate's nocturnal troubles. 

Not, Merlin thinks, that there's really any danger of anyone in the cabin catching wise to _anything_. Half of their campers can't catch wise to a very clearly enunciated order to go brush their teeth that evening—he and Gwaine take it in shifts to supervise them at the bath house to ensure basic hygiene standards aren't being violated—and later on, after Merlin's called his mother and they're about to turn in themselves, Gwaine rouses first Sam, then the other two known bedwetters, for a stumbling parade to the bath house to pee in the hopes of keeping the actual bedwetting to a minimum. 

The nights are short at camp, despite Merlin falling asleep earlier than he ever would if left to his own devices. Morning comes bright and early and _loud_. 

“No,” Merlin mumbles into his pillow when a bell wakes him. He doesn't know if it's the bell that means he's late yet until Gwaine kicks his bed frame. 

“Up and at 'em.”

Merlin growls, curling up and hoping that conveys the full measure of his grumpiness. Gwaine unfortunately appears to be that worst of friends: a morning person with an immunity to projected thoughts of instant and horrible death. 

“Merlin. Merlin. Merlin.”

“No.”

“I'm going to sic the campers on you in a second; we're going to be late.” 

“Fu—uuuugggggh,” Merlin moans, finally rolling over. Gwaine grins and shakes his head directly over Merlin's pillow, sprinkling him with a hundred water droplets from his still-wet hair, and Merlin takes a swipe at him, missing by miles. “You are the worst,” Merlin says with conviction. “The worst ever.”

“We really are going to be late,” Gwaine says, stepping back and reaching out just in time to stop Andrew from hitting Damien with a comic book. “That was the second bell. Andrew, stop, that's not helping.”

Merlin still feels like he's wrapped in cotton balls even as they walk down to Camelot, all of their damn kids turned up to rocket-launch energy levels. He does his best to help Gwaine keep them in line, stopping them from jumping off of every rock they pass and hitting each other with sticks, but he can't shake the sluggishness until breakfast is underway and he's allowed to drag himself to the special counselors-only coffee urn set up at the corner of the serving window. 

“You look terrible,” Sophia informs him, and laughs when he sticks his tongue out at her. “Just think: you're not even halfway through the first week yet.”

“Thanks so much for that,” Merlin says, pouring sugar into his cup. “I needed that reminder this morning.”

Sophia gives him her biggest, toothiest smile, and he gives up, taking his coffee back to coddle at his table. Its effects are just as sweet as always, and the sticky buns on the table finish the job; by the time they're dismissed, he feels more than a match for any tiny camper superheros who figure the best way to fly is to launch themselves from the top of boulders. 

George catches him at the bathhouse while he's working on a mouthful of toothpaste foam. “Mithian wants you to lead the activity for Pellinore and Geraint cabins today; we've got them first. 

“Whhh?” Merlin says, garbled through the foam, and spits into the sink. “What?”

“You're leading first period. No sweat, it's all the same stuff we did yesterday with the other cabins—individual activities don't start until tomorrow. You'll do fine; Freya will be there as back-up.”

Merlin wants to say—something, protest, agree, he isn't sure—but Andrew chooses that moment to rub his foamy toothbrush along the mirror stretching along the bathhouse wall behind the sinks, and he's forced into immediate intervention instead. 

He meets Freya on the stage, where she's hauling the hatbox out from the costume closet. “Need help?”

“Merlin!” she says. “Nah, I've got it. Just take one end so we can carry it outside.”

He catches the far end dutifully once she's dragged it free, and they balance it awkwardly between them out the back door of Camelot and down the steps. “So,” Freya says, once they've laid it down with a thunk on the nearest picnic table. “Are you ready to lead your very first activity?”

Merlin can see a group of campers bearing down on them, and the noise they're making transforms in his ears to a hungry roar. “Probably not.”

“You'll be fine,” Freya assures him. “Here are the sticky notes; I've already written all the characters on them. Grab a hat before they get here.”

He reaches blindly into the box, pulling out a hat at random, and ends up with the flamingo hat, with a great long neck that stretches up from his forehead and two legs that dangle past his shoulder. Freya gives him a nod as the campers draw closer, and he strikes a pose. 

“Welcome one, welcome all!” he cries, making his voice boom and crack on the vowels intentionally. “Welcome—to the Mad Hatter's tea party!”

They cheer, already playing along—they'd chosen this activity to start because Mithian and Freya swore it was one of the most popular activities at camp—and he gives them a mad grin, beginning to relax. “Who wants a party hat?”

He happens to glance up while Freya is doing crowd control in the scrum for the hat box, and catches sight of Arthur, standing at the top of Camelot's steps and watching them. Merlin acts on instinct, throwing an elaborate, ironic salute and bowing from the waist as he does, twirling his wrist. I'll show you creative, he thinks up at Arthur. They're eating out of my hand already; just watch me win them over. 

Arthur leaves, slipping back inside Camelot, and Merlin turns back to the campers, now outfitted in properly outrageous hats. “My, my!” he exclaims, putting his funny voice back on. “What a lot of well-dressed ladies and gentlebeasts! Are you all off to a party?” If there's a little bloom of resentment at Arthur's apparent dismissal, he ignores it. Arthur doesn't matter; what matters are the seventeen kids watching him with eager eyes, waiting for the magic to start.

*

He goes to the dock for his free periods—not always to swim; on hot days the lake is still cold enough to make him catch his breath—and basks happily in the sun, which has the added benefit of getting to listen to the lifeguards gossip quietly together between instructing their swim classes.

“Enjoying the view, Merlin?” Morgana asks, raising an eyebrow over her aviators. Merlin's nodding—the lake is a surreal blue, bordered on all sides by dark pines like something out of a storybook—when he notices she's tilting her head toward the few small sailboats running in drunken circles to the left of the swimming area. He scowls. Arthur teaching group of campers how to catch wind in a bit of fabric is something he's been trying to ignore.

“Not _that_ view.”

“Are you sure?” she asks sweetly, pulling her sunglasses down to peer over the top of them. “He's quite a dish.”

“A dish I won't be having,” Merlin retorts, then blinks at her. “Anyway, _dish_?”

“I am cool and retro,” Morgana says, pushing her sunglasses back up her nose and lifting her chin. “You should make him chase you, you know. Arthur likes a good game.”

“I'm not here to play games.”

Morgana snorts. “You don't mean you believed all the shit Uther talked about staff relationships, do you? Because let me tell you, as long as you keep the campers out of it, you could date an octopus for all Uther cares.”

“I don't want to date anyone,” Merlin says. He kicks his feet at the water petulantly. “I just want to sit here and enjoy the day without my eyeballs being assaulted by stupid shirtless prats.”

“My brother does look good in an orange life vest, it's true,” Morgana agrees, and pats Merlin on the head. “Don't strain your neck ogling his ass in those little shorts, now.” 

“Arthur doesn't even like me,” Merlin mutters. He doesn't mean for her to hear, but she actually _laughs_.

“Is that what you think?” she asks, and before Merlin can ask her to unpack any of that particular statement, she's blowing her whistle and yelling for her swimmers to give her fifty bobs. Merlin takes the opportunity to slip into the water and swim to the second dock, twenty feet from shore and out of Morgana's reach.

Arthur really doesn't look good in a life vest, he thinks, pulling himself onto the warm wood of the dock. No one looks good in a life vest, especially the orange ones; they have to be twenty years old, sitting hilariously over Arthur's shoulders. 

Arthur's shoulders, which are broad, and tanned, and really...quite...muscular, now that Merlin is looking. Not that he is. Or that he cares to. Just that they're the sort of shoulders which might be quite nice to look at, if one wished to. And on further inspection—if one cared to—it might also be nice to watch Arthur with campers. His laughter carries clearly across the water, bright as the sun's reflection off the waves, and he's so obviously at ease—so obviously happy, doing something he loves. 

Merlin flops back on the dock, throwing one arm over his eyes, and wonders if Mithian will believe him if he skips the last activity of the day and claims he was eaten by a giant squid. Maybe they could make an improv game out of it and use it for an activity. There's a picnic table behind Camelot right on the lake shore, after all—it seems a shameful waste of the view not to use it. 

He does go back, of course; he even shows up early, his hair still damp from the swim back to shore, and it's a good thing he doesn't stay out on the docks dying slowly of embarrassment. Rainclouds gather steadily all afternoon, and by the time the dinner bell rings, the steady drizzle has turned into a downpour. Gwaine looks despondent. 

“Camp outs are always the best part of a week,” he sighs when Arthur walks up to their cabin to let them know they won't be able to take their campers out that night. Merlin's privately glad to put off sleeping in a tent and cooking over a smoky fire while supervising seven demons from hell all high on marshmallows and chocolate, but he doesn't say anything, merely adopts a serious expression. “They've been looking forward to it, too; they'll be impossible tonight.” 

“I'll drop by the cabin later on to help you out,” Arthur says. 

“Really? That would be amazing,” Gwaine says, and does a little fist pump. “They'll love that, Arthur, and it'll make our lives so much easier.” 

Merlin bites his tongue hard against his protests until Arthur's safely out of earshot. “We don't need his help,” he mutters to Gwaine, but Gwaine either doesn't hear the sharpness in his words, or doesn't care. 

“Just wait,” Gwaine assures him, which really isn't all that assuring at all. “You'll see.”

“You know that just sounds doubly ominous,” Merlin says. 

Gwaine claps him on the back. “It'll be great!” 

It turns out to be even worse than Merlin could ever imagine. 

Arthur turns up just as they've finally managed to order the last of the kids into bed; most of them aren't lying down yet but as it's taken half an hour to get them this far, Merlin's willing to take it as a win. 

“Cabin Kay!” Arthur says through the screen door to the porch. “Permission to enter?”

“No!” yells Charlie, just as Julius says, “Yes!” and all the kids dissolve into fits of giggles as Gwaine goes to the door to let Arthur in. 

“It's quiet time,” Merlin reminds the campers, a little hopelessly. “Bedtime voices, guys.” 

“You don't want Arthur to leave again, do you?” Gwaine asks; the reaction is mixed, but Merlin's pretty sure the kids calling out “Yes!” are doing it because they think it's funny. 

Arthur hefts a guitar in one hand. “I could always go see if Cabin Perceval want me to play for them, instead.”

There's a round of shushing, and Arthur smiles, settling down on the trunk at the foot of Gwaine's bed. “Good, I'd hate to leave such an amazing cabin. You'll have to be very quiet and listen though, okay?”

Merlin stands by his own bed, leaning against the wall while Arthur banters with the kids, somehow engaging them without riling them all up. It's brilliant to watch: Arthur makes it look so easy, almost like magic, and Merlin spends a fruitless moment wishing his own magic was good for anything _useful_ , like this, instead of party tricks and petty eavesdropping. All of Arthur's prickliness falls away when he's talking to campers, making him seem as warm and caring as the best kind of big brother, one who'd listen to you and destroy anyone who hurt you even as he gave you a hard time about everything. It's not fair, Merlin thinks; it's not fair that everyone else got the best bits of Arthur when Merlin only got the sharp, irritated side.

Merlin almost doesn't notice when Arthur starts playing; he strums the guitar so softly, almost imperceptible as he keeps talking, but when he starts singing, Merlin has to slide along the wall until he can sit. 

_Stay awake, don't rest your head_  
Don't lie down upon your bed;  
While the moon drifts in the sky  
Stay awake, don't close your eyes. 

Arthur's voice isn't very deep in tone, but it has a depth to it, a richness that makes Merlin's knees a little weak. He watches Arthur closely, the lines of his body where he's bent over the guitar, cradling it while his fingers move light and swift over the strings. 

_Stay awake, don't nod and dream_ , Arthur sings, and Merlin curls up on his bed, dragging a pillow over his ears as if that might help stem the treacherous things stirring up beneath his breastbone. Stop, he tells himself firmly, knowing full well it's probably already too late. Arthur's voice is gentle, like the lake on a clear day under a warm sun, only the barest of ripples disturbing the surface and sending the reflections into quiet trills, and Merlin is screwed.

*

Merlin sort of avoids Arthur after that. He doesn't really mean to, at first, but he starts getting this embarrassing swooping feeling in his gut when Arthur meets his eyes, and it's just easier not to even look at Arthur in the first place once he's realized what's going on. The first week ends, and it's harder than Merlin had expected to say goodbye to his campers. They're good kids, a fun group, and he's grown used to their little idiosyncrasies: the way Andrew balances on one foot to brush his teeth, Charlie's tuneless humming while he does his cabin chores, how Julius giggles so much when he's trying to tell a joke that he can never actually get the words out. He helps them find the odd socks that have hidden under the bunks and makes them check the clothesline for their bathing suits and towels; he shakes their parents' hands and waves the cars out of the parking lot, and when it's all over, he stands just inside the cabin door and tries not to feel sad about how empty it looks. There is, though, still a bone-deep relief that he has almost twenty-four hours before the next group of campers comes in.

There's something on his pillow. He frowns, closing the door behind him before crossing to his bed and picking it up. It's—he thinks it might be art. It's probably a craft of some kind, because there's paint on it; paint in bright, happy strokes between the sticks glued all over the paper. 

“Gwaine? What the hell is this?”

Gwaine sticks his head out of the counselor room. “Looks like one of the campers left you something.”

“If it was a camper,” Merlin says, “why does it say _GWAINE IS THE BEST_ across the bottom?”

“It's a well-known fact,” Gwaine tells him very gravely, but the effect is spoiled by the gleeful crinkles deepening around his eyes.

“It's hideous.”

Gwaine arranges his face into a hurt expression. “That's not very nice,” he says, coming out and taking the creation from Merlin. “Someone probably worked very hard on this; you should definitely tape it up over your bed to show it off.”

“I feel like a parent sticking my kid's art up on the fridge,” Merlin says, but he hangs it up carefully, just above the foot of his bed. Gwaine doesn't say anything, but he does whistle all the way down to Camelot when they go to collect Mordred—their one remaining camper—from Gwen's afternoon Magic activity, and Merlin can't quite stop smiling when he thinks no one is looking.

*

Camp becomes a comfortable place for Merlin. Mornings are never easier, and when his new campers get into an argument he still wants to crash their heads together or throttle them, but there's a rhythm to the schedule that's easy to fall into, and it's never really boring despite being miles and miles away from any town. He begins, for the first time, to understand a little bit what people mean when they talk about 'living in community', and he spends a day being embarrassed about that before reassuring himself that he'll be okay as long as Will never finds out.

Through whatever stroke of luck the universe has seen fit to bestow on him, Merlin avoids song-leading duty until the end of the second week of camp. He keeps meaning to ask Gwen to help him learn some of the songs, but he never really gets around to it, instead just keeping his head down when sing-a-longs happen and doing his best to follow along with the movements. He knows he'll have to lead the songs eventually—there's a schedule pinned next to the office door—but he doesn't really _realize_ it until he's herded his cabin down to Camelot and no one's there to lead the camp in song while they wait for the kitchen staff to finish getting ready. 

“Merlin?” Arthur calls down, standing with his arms crossed at the top of the steps, and Merlin thinks, _shit_. 

He runs up the steps, barely avoiding tripping along the way, but as hard as he tries to remember the songs—one of them, any of them—he's still coming up blank by the time he reaches the top.

“Well, Merlin,” Arthur says; his voice is warm but Merlin knows he isn't imagining the warning in Arthur's eyes. “What song are you going to start us off with today?”

Merlin opens and closes his mouth, and when the pause grows too long the campers start shouting suggestions up at him. 

“The donut song!”

“Pizza Man!”

“Rags! Sing Rags!”

“Um,” Merlin says, and clears his throat. He has no idea what any of those songs are. “I'll—be right back.”

“Merlin?” Arthur says as Merlin ducks into Camelot and runs. He doesn't go far; he'd acted without thinking, but once he catches sight of the napkins hanging nearby, he gets an idea. It's unorthodox, sure, but it's either this or be shown up as a total incompetent, just when he's starting to get the hang of things. 

“What are you doing?” Arthur asks in a low voice when Merlin reemerges. His eyebrows are knit together, and Merlin does his best to give a winning smile, tying his red napkin around his neck like a kerchief. 

“You all know me as Merlin,” he announces to the campers, ignoring the beams of focused irritation he can practically feel shooting out of Arthur's eyes. “But outside of camp, that's not my _real_ name.” He's already reaching for his magic—he'll have to make it small, believable enough that the smarter and older kids think they can figure it out—and it's eager to respond, bending easily to his thoughts. He palms a newly-appeared quarter and holds it up for everyone to see. “My real name is Dragoon. Dragoon the Great!” 

He can hear Arthur's annoyed huff, and he turns a too-wide smile to Arthur. “Would you hold this for me?” he asks politely, and waits until Arthur holds out a hand, putting the quarter squarely into Arthur's palm. He folds Arthur's fingers around it and instructs, “Think very hard about this quarter. I want you to hold it very clearly in your mind, alright?”

“Do I have to close my eyes?” Arthur asks, raising an eyebrow, but Merlin waves the question off.

“Of course not. All you have to do is think of the quarter, _only_ the quarter, or you'll lose it, and then you'll owe me twenty-five cents.” There's a little laughter at that, and some of the nerves lift. Merlin squares his shoulders. “Oh—now look what you've done,” he scolds Arthur, reaching toward his ear and pulling the quarter out from the air directly behind it. “I told you you were going to lose it.” 

“I didn't,” Arthur objects, but when he opens his hand, the quarter is gone—vanished by Merlin's magic. 

“Hold on,” Merlin says, circling Arthur and inspecting him with an exaggerated squint. “You've got something—” He pulls another quarter from behind Arthur's other ear and hands it to him. “Oh dear. Are you still thinking about that quarter? Stop!”

“I'm not doing anything!” Arthur says, but Merlin, in a fit of daring, sinks his hands into Arthur's hair and scrubs his fingers vigorously over Arthur's scalp. Arthur yelps and squirms away, but Merlin follows him determinedly. It's oddly satisfying.

“You'll make the magic go haywire!” Merlin says. “Stop thinking about quarters! Stop!”

Everyone's laughing now, but Merlin's trapped, stuck in a terrible predicament of his own making, because Arthur's hair is soft, the strands thick and smooth where they slip against his skin, and he smells good, like warm pine and shampoo and a little bit like sunscreen. He has to stop; he has to go on to the next part of the trick, but it takes him a few beats longer to do so than usual.

“I'm not thinking about quarters!” Arthur says, waving his hands around for what Merlin can tell is dramatic effect; he's starting to play along. “Let go!”

“Aha!” Merlin says triumphantly as quarters start falling from between his fingers out of Arthur's hair. “I knew it!”

“Those aren't mine!”

“They aren't?” Merlin asks, adopting a surprised expression. “Then who...” He trails off, and takes his hands out of Arthur's hair to point at the campers, who are rolling around in gales of laughter. “It must be them! They're making the magic go—go—” He stops, clapping both hands to his mouth.

“Merlin?” Arthur asks, his hair sticking up at all angles. 

Merlin holds one finger up, slowly drawing his hands back away from his lips, catching the very edge of a ribbon with his thumb and forefinger and pulling it from between his teeth. He widens his eyes and hops around as he pulls, moving his arms faster and faster as he pulls more ribbon out. It's easy to shift the color as it goes—from blue to red to pink and orange—and when it turns to yellow Arthur grabs on too, pulling hand over hand while Merlin keeps hopping, waving his arms, both of them working together for comedic effect until Merlin cuts the fabric off with a thought and catches the end of it as it pops out of his mouth, pulling back against Arthur until they're holding the whole rainbow ribbon out between them as the kitchen bell rings, calling them into the mess. 

Merlin bows for the applause, motioning until Arthur bows with him, and gladly lets Arthur take over calling groups into lunch. He nudges at the quarters with his mind, cleaning them all up in an invisible sweep before any campers can grab them, but Arthur's still holding onto the ribbon, so Merlin leaves it be. 

“Dragoon the Great?” Arthur asks quietly, once everyone's gone past them into the mess and they're both walking through the doors inside. 

“Oh shut up,” Merlin says; “I was under pressure.”

Arthur gives him a curious sort of look. “I was only saying—good job.”

“Oh,” Merlin says, at a loss. “Thanks?”

“Of course, you won't have a moment of peace now,” Arthur says as campers at three different tables try furiously to flag Merlin down. He claps Merlin on the shoulder and leaves him to his fate; the skin under Merlin's shirt, embarrassingly, tingles all through the meal. 

Arthur's right, of course. Merlin has to snatch bites of his BLT between answering questions about his magic tricks from everyone at his table; he's barely finished half of it by the time Freya starts scraping plates and orders everyone to stop badgering him and let him eat. It doesn't stop there, though—the campers in his cabin spend the rest of the day demanding lessons and the answers to everything, and Mithian buttonholes him the next morning to inform him he'll be leading at least one magic activity a week for the rest of the summer.

“I can't believe you never told me!” she scolds him. “You've been hiding all this from me; you _have_ to offer more magic activities, not just card tricks.”

“I wasn't _hiding_ it,” Merlin says, uncomfortable because that's a lie; he's been hiding it forever, and he's still hiding his real magic under the veneer of physically plausible card tricks. “I told you I knew a couple of basic things.” 

“Basic!” Mithian says, throwing up her arms. “He calls that basic! I call it brilliant,” she informs him firmly, shaking a finger at him, and drafts him into helping her with the Stupid Human Tricks activity during their next planning meeting. 

It's harder to stay away from Arthur, afterward, at least without making it obvious that's what he's doing. Maybe it's chance; maybe it's just that he's smelled Arthur's hair like a creep and now he can't stop thinking about how the strands of it felt between his fingers; maybe Arthur's following him. Merlin knows which possibility he'd bet money on. He's still trying to figure out a better way to avoid Arthur without appearing to avoid him when they both end up on bathhouse duty the following Wednesday night, after all the campers are in bed.

Merlin's been on bathhouse duty a few times, so it's an easy routine despite Arthur making him clean the mirrors on the girls' side twice. There's nothing there that warrants cleaning, Merlin thinks, a little sour as he sprays them with cleaner again; the girls are cleaner than the boys, despite what he'd been led to believe with the horror stories some of the staff have told about the places they've found dirty pads stashed away. Even with the double-clean, though, it takes them no time at all to finish the girls' part, and they haul the bottles of cleaner and buckets over to the boys' side without much conversation. 

Arthur scrubs the toilets, yellow gloves up to his elbows, while Merlin wipes down the sinks and sweeps out the toilets. George assigns himself the showers, and is singing quietly to himself as he scrubs the floors with bleach and a broom.

“He's thorough,” Merlin says, the third time he catches Arthur glancing at the partition between the toilets and the showers with his eyebrows raised. “The bathhouse is never cleaner than after George is on duty.”

“Hmm,” Arthur says, noncommittal, and then, “Oh, for fuck's—Jesus Christ.” 

“What?” Merlin says, getting a better grip on the broom. “Is it another spider?” There are big ones lurking in the tall rafters of the bathhouse; he's been assured that they seldom descend and are harmless anyway, but after seeing one he's taking no chances. He can still hear Arthur quietly swearing in the furthest stall. “Arthur?”

“It's not a goddamned spider,” Arthur says, emerging grim-faced with a cleaning bucket in his hand. “Look.”

Merlin peers cautiously into the bucket, but the truth of what he's seeing takes a few moments to sink in. 

“Is that...?” he asks at last, looking back up at Arthur. “Are you serious?” Arthur just stares back, a vein starting to jump in his temple. “Someone shat in a bucket? Literally, someone decided to squat down and shit. In a bucket.” He looks back at the offending thing. “Why?”

“ _Teenagers_ ,” Arthur says, with passion. To be fair, Merlin thinks, he knows certain fully-grown adults who'd think this was a hilarious stunt to pull, but...yeah. It's probably a teenager. 

It's a pretty good sized turd, Merlin thinks, inspecting the contents of the bucket more closely. Nicely shaped. Whoever made it probably has good, healthy bowels. When he says as much to Arthur, though, Arthur goes a bit purple in the face. 

“Healthy bowels?” Arthur asks, his voice rising. “Someone does _this_ —” he shakes the bucket for emphasis, “—and your response is about the state of their _bowels_?”

Merlin gives an awkward shrug, watching Arthur struggle with his temper—it's late, but campers wander into the bathhouse at all hours to answer nature's call—and he's still trying to figure out how exactly he can recover from this latest apparent gaffe when he notices Arthur's shoulders are shaking. Damn, he thinks in resignation; here it comes, another reminder that he isn't treating the situation or his job with the proper seriousness, because heaven forbid there be any fun at all in life no matter where he is—

He's slow to realize that Arthur's shoulders aren't shaking in rage—or at least, not entirely from rage—but in laughter: silent, suppressed laughter that bends him slowly at the waist until his head is level with his knees, the bucket hanging precariously from one hand and scraping the floor. “Bowels,” he wheezes. “Oh fuck, he's got the best damn bowels at camp, and he—he's—showing them off.” He sucks in a breath, free hand braced on his knee, before the laughter swoops back in to shake him again, growing louder until he's gone red and a little squeaky from it. 

Arthur having a breakdown over the poop-bucket catches Merlin off-guard, but Arthur's laughter tugs at him until he's grinning too. “I'll be he's proud of this turd,” he says thoughtfully, and Arthur, who's just starting to recover, straightening and wiping the water from his eyes with his shoulder, dissolves back into fits. “He's the best shitter in the place, and he wants the world to notice.”

“Oh my God,” Arthur gasps. “The best shitter in the world.” He teeters a little, staggering as he tries to stand up, and Merlin can see the moment he loses his balance—he reaches out to try to catch Arthur's elbow or something as Arthur goes over, but misses; Arthur ends up on his ass in the middle of the bathhouse floor, still laughing helplessly. 

“Fuck,” Arthur says, looking up at Merlin once he's calmed down and recovered a bit. “Now I feel bad about cleaning it; maybe we should leave it as the art installation it's so clearly meant to be. Someone's making a bold statement about the futility of our role in the universe.”

“No,” Merlin says, very firmly, leaning his broom against one of the toilet cubicles and sliding down to sit near Arthur, propped up against the wall. “No, you're going to clean the hell out of that bucket, and then you're going to bleach it three extra times for good measure.”

“I suppose.”

“You need to sound a lot surer about that, for my own peace of mind.” 

Arthur stretches his legs out, putting the bucket to one side and leaning back on his hands. George is still singing in the showers; Merlin thinks he's mangling something from _Cats_.

“I bet you didn't know this is what you were signing up for when you applied for this job,” Arthur says, offhand. “Come to camp! Have your peace of mind wrecked by sleepless demons and clean up poop!”

“I didn't sign up for any of it,” Merlin says without thinking. “I just didn't have anywhere else to go.”

There's an uncomfortable silence. Merlin pulls his knees to his chest and curses himself when Arthur gives him a long sideways look. He's been so careful about this, and now he's told the truth to his boss's son. Fuck.

“Sorry,” Merlin says, after he can't stand avoiding eye contact any longer. “I shouldn't have—”

“The A.U.P. is named for me,” Arthur interrupts. “Arthur Uther Pendragon Bed-Wetting System. That's what it stands for. My mother came up with it before...when I was little.”

Merlin still doesn't look at Arthur, just hunches his shoulders. “Is this some sort of 'I'll show you mine if you show me yours' game? Am I supposed to spill because you did?”

“No,” Arthur says. “That's not—well,” he amends, when Merlin gives him a sharp look. “Maybe a little. But maybe I was just inspired by the bodily functions on display tonight, that could be a reason.”

Merlin shakes his head against the smile threatening in one corner of his mouth, and stares up into the shadowy ceiling, full of dusty exposed beams and lurking spiders. George has moved on to singing all sixteen parts in 'One Day More', accompanied by vigorously sloshing water. 

“Our apartment building burned down,” Merlin says. He leaves it there. Arthur doesn't need to know the rest of it: how Merlin's mother had nearly died, how she still coughs too much; he doesn't need to know that Merlin had been in his once-weekly afternoon class, still seething after the argument they'd had that morning about his _wasted potential_ ; no one needs to know how sure Merlin had been, for long, cold, terrifying moments, that he'd done it, that his magic had somehow broken free. No one needs to know that even after the truth had come out about their asshole landlord, the fear lingered that somehow his mother would be hurt while he wasn't there, and he'd be the reason for it. 

He doesn't say any of that, just turns from inspecting the rafters to picking at the dirt under his nails. “I needed somewhere to live while my mom looked for a new place. Gaius is my uncle. So here I am.” He pulls one of the loose threads on his worn shorts. “That's it; that's the big secret, ten points to you for discovering it.” 

He chances a look at Arthur, just in time to catch something in Arthur's expression that's too soft and too close to pity for him to even think of stomaching. “I'm not a charity case,” he snaps, jumping to his feet and grabbing the broom again. “Don't—I'm fine. I didn't ask to be here, but I work hard.”

“I know you do,” Arthur says, levering himself up and leaving the bucket where it is. “You're a good counselor, Merlin. I'm glad you're here.”

Merlin's facing away from Arthur; he doesn't stop sweeping, but he does shut his eyes for a moment. “I know.”

“You are,” Arthur insists, and clears his throat, letting the conversation die.

“We'll be ready for these schoolboys,” George warbles on, distorted through the thin wood of the partition, then pitches his voice higher. “Watch 'em run amok! Catch 'em as they fall!”

“The real question here,” Arthur says, sudden enough that the muscles in Merlin's shoulders give an involuntary jump, “is _who_ is going to clean this bucket.” Merlin turns around just in time to see Arthur nudge the poop-bucket across the floor with a toe. 

“Definitely you,” Merlin says quickly. “Finders, keepers.”

“I'm the senior staff member here. I could make you do it.”

“You could _try_ ,” Merlin retorts. “Besides, you're the one with the gloves; I wouldn't touch it if you paid me.”

“I'll make a deal with you,” Arthur says, pushing the bucket further toward Merlin. “You clean the bucket, and I'll help you and Gwaine on your camp out tomorrow.”

“Fuck no,” Merlin says automatically, then rethinks. Kay is nearly full this week; they have eleven campers who've been cranked up on adrenaline and excitement the entire week. He and Gwaine have a counselor-in-training in their cabin now, but Gilli is sixteen, soft-spoken, and has so far been mostly useless. Another pair of hands and eyes would maybe keep Merlin from tearing out all his hair, and he's never liked the idea of going bald.

He holds out one hand. “Give me the damn gloves.”

*

Merlin ends up regretting his decision, which he should have known he would. Arthur is amazing the entire evening, and that's exactly the problem. While Merlin's busy setting up the tents and distributing lopsided ants-on-a-log, Arthur somehow manages to build a perfect fire and turn out beautifully cooked english muffin pizzas—the same meal Merlin and Gwaine had accidentally burned the hell out of the week before.

“Here,” Arthur says, once Merlin's finished rinsing the last dish in bleach water. Gwaine's taken Gilli and the boys off to 'forage' for marshmallow roasting sticks in the woods around the campsite. “I saved you one.” He holds out two halves of a pizza on a folded bit of tinfoil. “They're still hot, careful.”

Merlin takes the tiny pizzas, and looks at Arthur—who, damn it, has no right to look so earnest about fucking _pizza_. “I could have made my own.”

“Gwaine told me how hopeless you were last week.” Arthur shrugs. “This seemed easier.”

“I wasn't _hopeless_.”

“Witness reports beg to differ,” Arthur says with a grin, and interrupts Merlin before he can say another word. “I wanted to do it, okay? It was no trouble.”

The way he says it broadcasts pretty clearly that he's not interested in further discussion, so Merlin stores that bit of information away to examine later and says, “I'm allergic to tomatoes.”

Arthur's face falls so quickly Merlin almost ruins things by laughing. “Fu—uuf, I'm so sorry, I didn't—” He blinks, and looks more closely at Merlin. “You little shit!”

Merlin has to dance out of reach when Arthur makes a grab for the pizzas. “Foof? Really? Better watch your language there, Arthur.”

“Give me my pizzas back, you idiot!”

“Mine now,” Merlin says, and licks them both.

“It all becomes clear,” Arthur says, chasing him around the tents. “You're actually eight years old, aren't you?”

“What took you so long to figure that out?” Merlin shoots back, and nearly trips over one of the real eight-year-olds in their charge, barely avoiding skewering himself on Mordred's marshmallow stick. 

Mordred gives him a dirty look. “You're such a loser.”

“Mordred,” Arthur says, slipping easily back into his role as stern program director. “We don't use language like that.”

“Sorry,” Mordred says without looking at Merlin, and stomps off to the fire. 

“Right,” Arthur says, with a rueful smile that twists uncomfortable knots in Merlin's intestines; “back to work. Eat your damn pizza.”

Merlin regrets his decision to have Arthur along on the camp-out even more after the campers and Gilli are all tucked into their tents and sleeping bags, when Arthur's got one foot up on the stones of the fire circle and his guitar in his hands, playing without singing along, his eyes half shut and the dying light of the coals softening the angles of his jaw. Gwaine's between them, stretched out along one of the benches with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up over his head and over his eyes, hands folded over his stomach, but if Merlin tilts his head right and narrows his right eye, Gwaine fades into the dark and Merlin can pretend it's only Arthur with him, playing love songs for him instead of lullabies for devil children. He can pretend they only have one narrow tent, and that when the fire is nothing more than embers, Arthur will crawl inside with him, pressing warm and close to share a sleeping bag, and—

“Merlin,” says a voice at his elbow, and Merlin just about jumps out of his skin, barely biting back a highly inappropriate string of swear words. 

“Mordred,” he says, recovering and turning to face Mordred more fully. “What's wrong?”

“I can't sleep,” Mordred says, his hands tucked into his armpits. “I need a Benadryl.”

“Why don't you try listening to the music?” Merlin asks. “Or counting sheep?”

“I tried already,” Mordred says, aggrieved. Merlin does not point out the campers have only been in their tents for about ten minutes and that maybe Mordred should try _harder_. “I need Benadryl. My mom always gives it to me when I have trouble sleeping.”

“Well,” Merlin says, “I can't give you any. Unless you get a bug bite and have an allergic reaction or something, you can't have any Benadryl. It's a camp rule, I'm sorry.”

Mordred scowls, but he walks back to his tent. Merlin's just about to sigh in relief when Mordred stops and turns.

“Ow,” he says. “A bug bit me.”

Merlin just looks at him. “Really?”

“It hurts. I think it's swelling.” Mordred sticks out his arm, as if to show off the alleged bug bite. “Now can I have a Benadryl?”

“No,” Merlin says firmly. “Go lie down and close your eyes; you'll fall asleep.”

The look Mordred gives Merlin is almost frightening, but Merlin doesn't budge, watching until Mordred finally crawls back inside the tent and zips the door closed. 

“Fucking Benadryl,” Gwain mutters, too softly for the campers to hear, and throws an arm over his face, his elbow coming to rest just above his nose. 

Arthur doesn't say anything, just keeps plucking the strings on his guitar in a tune that sounds vaguely Spanish, but when Merlin looks at him he nods, one side of his mouth pulled into the barest hint of a smile. 

Merlin quirks his mouth in reply, and relaxes into the music and the blessed quiet of the night.

Arthur stays for a long while, but he leaves eventually to sleep in his own cabin, and Gwaine and Merlin crawl blearily into their tent, rolling up into separate sleeping bags and turning their backs. Merlin's asleep even before Gwaine, which is a feat in and of itself. They wake up far too early when the tinny alarm on Gwaine's watch goes off, and stumble back out, equally bleary-eyed, to rouse campers who are all far too excited to be awake. 

It takes them longer to break down the campsite than it did to set it up; Merlin spends fifteen minutes trying to stuff the tent poles back into their bag, which appears to have shrunk three sizes overnight. They still don't quite fit when he's finished, but he calls it good enough and throws them into the handcart they'd brought with them. They're a quiet, ragtag group trudging the quarter-mile along the dirt driveway back to camp; the sun is up but not enough to have gained any heat, and the grass on either side is all wet still with dew. 

Gwaine takes the cart to drop their supplies back off at the kitchen and the storage shed, while Merlin and Gilli lead their campers up to the cabin, reminding them that it's still before the first morning bell and they need to use their quietest voices. He's supervising them at the bathhouse when Morgana walks by, slowing down when she sees him. 

“Good camp-out?” she asks, leaning against the other side of the railing.

“Good enough,” he says. “They all made it back alive, so that counts, right?”

“I heard Arthur went with you.”

“Oh,” Merlin says, “yeah, just to help us out.” Morgana hums, and Merlin realizes too late how sharp her gaze is, how clearly she's evaluating his every action, hungry for gossip. He puts on his most innocent expression.

She smirks anyway, looking satisfied. “You should ask him about contra dancing.”

“ _What_ dancing?”

“Just ask him what he does on his free Saturday evenings,” she says. “I promise you won't be disappointed.”

Merlin frowns, but she's already pushing off the railing, twiddling her fingers at him in a goodbye as she makes her way down to main camp. She's played her game well; there's a part of him that wants to forget all about it, because he doesn't want to give her the satisfaction, but he already knows that bit is going to lose out in a big way to the part of him that's dying to know what kind of dancing a person like Arthur Pendragon would willingly give up his free nights for.

He doesn't get the chance for a few days; the ACA visit is looming closer, and Arthur's fully occupied with that when he isn't running around doing a hundred other things. He's still out and about the camp; the counselors-in-training are two weeks into their four-week program and he spends most of his time with them, herding them about in a small pack as he trains them, but every spare moment he has he spends closeted up in the office with Uther, looking steadily more and more exhausted. Merlin knows he doesn't face half the pressure Arthur does, but he can sympathize with how tired Arthur looks—mornings, in particular, never get easier, and Merlin pushes his luck when he can, dozing in fits and starts until he absolutely _has_ to get up. 

On Saturday, he has every intention of getting up long before the first bell rings and campers take over the showers, but when he finally pries his eyes open, there's only five minutes left before the bell is due to sound.

“Fuck,” he mutters, rolling onto his back and pushing the heels of his hands against his eyelids. Saturday means turn-over day; it means parents coming to pick up their kids, and Merlin hasn't showered since he took a swim in the lake on Thursday. He considers, briefly, just tying a bandana around his head, but he can _feel_ the dirt in his pores, and he probably needs a shave.

He'll just have to make it quick.

“Are you showering?” Gilli asks him quietly, wide-eyed as he watches Merlin grab his towel and shampoo. “The bell's going to ring, and Arthur said—”

“Gilli,” Gwaine says from his own bed. “Quiet.”

Merlin swipes half a salute at Gwaine, and practically runs to the bathhouse. He's quick—the shower water is never more than lukewarm at best, which is a disincentive to stay—and he thinks he's free and clear by the time he's finishing rinsing off, ears straining to hear the bell. All he has to do is wrap the towel around himself and scuttle out of the showers, and he'll be free and clear.

The bell, of course, rings just as he's shutting the water off. “Damn it,” he whispers, scrubbing the towel through his hair. He's just gathering his shampoo up, towel tied tight around his waist, when he hears someone else in the showers. “ _Damn_ it.” Whoever it is must have been lying in bed fully awake, just waiting for the bell to ring, and run for the bathhouse when it did. He waits, not quite breathing, until he hears a shower curtain rustle, and makes a break for it as soon as he thinks he's clear. Walk with intention, he reminds himself. He's done nothing wrong, really, it isn't as if he'd meant to do this or had plans to ogle the children or anything. One of the curtains twitches as he walks by, and he can't help but glance over out of the corner of his eyes—not long, not more than an instant; just long enough to recognize Mordred's face peeping out at him—and he looks away again fast, quickening his steps until he's out of the bathhouse and safely on the path back to his cabin.

He doesn't think anything more of it until long after the parents have come and gone, taking their campers with them; it's not until after the remaining campers, hanging over through the next week, have finished lunch that Uther signals him to wait in the office while everyone else files out of the mess hall.

“Merlin,” Uther says, closing the office door behind him. “Do you know why I've called you in here?”

Merlin freezes. It can't be his mother, it _can't_ be; she'd been fine last night, Aunt Billie had even confirmed it. She'd barely coughed at all, and today she'd had an interview for a job, one she'd sounded excited about—

“No,” he manages. “I can't think of any reason, sir.”

Uther sits in the larger of the two chairs in the office, leaning back and placing a hand on a thick binder on the wide desk. “This is the documentation for the American Camping Association,” he tells Merlin. “Do you know how long I've been working on it? Do you know how many nights Arthur has sat here at the computer, long past the time everyone else was in bed, making sure every T was crossed, every I dotted? Going over our numbers three times to make sure they matched up? Personally revising every contract we've ever made, every staff member we've hired?”

“No, sir.”

“A year. An entire year, Merlin.”

Merlin doesn't say anything, waiting until he can tell where this conversation is going. The sinking feeling he'd started with is persistent, but there's a relief outweighing it; he's sure nothing will be as bad as if Uther had told him something had happened to his mother.

“I cannot afford any slip-ups at this point, not from any member of my staff.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Merlin,” Uther says, with no inflection, no softness in his voice; “would you care to explain why you were seen in the showers by a camper this morning?”

“Oh.” _Fuck_ , Merlin thinks. He should have expected this. “It was an accident, sir; I was late getting to the showers this morning, and I can't have been there for more than a minute after the bell rang, I promise—”

Uther holds a hand up, and Merlin cuts himself off, swallowing the words of his excuse back down. “You've put me in a difficult position,” Uther begins, and Merlin locks his fingers together. He can't possibly be _fired_ over this, can he? Just because one sniveling camper happened to see him leaving the shower? He'd never liked Mordred, anyway. The rest of the campers _love_ Merlin—they love his magic tricks and the funny voices he does for them when they're doing cabin chores—it's only Mordred who never smiles, and gives Merlin a hard time about not knowing exactly how things work at camp, and asks for fucking Benadryl when he can't sleep.

“Consider this a warning,” Uther says. “I am not in the habit of giving warnings; you should already know better than to shower when campers are also inside the bathhouse. It cannot happen again, Merlin. I will not be so lenient a second time.”

“Of course not,” Merlin says quickly. “It won't happen, I mean. Thank you, sir.”

“See that it doesn't.” Uther turns away toward the desk, already moving on. “You may go.”

“Thank you,” Merlin says again, and flees. 

He doesn't get far, running into Arthur and nearly falling over his own feet down the back steps before Arthur catches him, steadying him by his elbows. 

“You alright, Merlin?”

“Fine!” Merlin says, ignoring the fact that Arthur probably already knows that Uther thinks he's a pedophile, what the fuck. “I'm peachy keen.”

“You're certainly something, anyway,” Arthur says, and Merlin looks up at the fondness in his voice. “You want to sit for a minute?”

Merlin hesitates. “I should go back to my cabin.”

“You've only got one camper at the moment,” Arthur says, sitting on the steps and patting the wood next to him. “And I assume both Gwaine and Gilli are with him; it's the rest period, you can take a break for a minute.”

Merlin blows out a breath, ruffling his bangs, but he sits, looking out through the thin line of trees to the lake. “Only for a minute.”

“Sure,” Arthur says, leaning back on his elbows and stretching his legs down the stairs. He tilts his face up into the sun. “Nice day out today.”

Merlin hums in agreement, though truthfully he's enjoying the view of Arthur far more than the lake. There's just a hint under Arthur's shirt of the lines of his muscles; his shorts are riding low enough that there's a slender strip of skin on display, just enough that Merlin can make out a trail of pale fuzz bisecting his stomach. 

“What's contra dancing?” Merlin asks, before his attention can stray any further south on Arthur's body. 

Arthur cracks an eye open. “Excuse me?”

“Contra dancing. What is it? Someone told me that's what you do when you have a free evening.” 

“Who told you that?” Arthur asks, and before Merlin can reply, he sighs. “No, let me guess. Morgana. Fucking figures.” 

“So what is it?” Merlin persists. Arthur's reaction isn't angry or even resigned; he seems mostly undisturbed, but now Merlin's curiosity is whetted. “Do you go out and argue with people? Throw over the governments of small tropical countries?”

“Not exactly,” Arthur says, but he sits up. “The name was French, originally. It's like square dancing, except not exactly—more like a combination of square dancing and line dancing.”

Merlin purses his lips. “Isn't line dancing something for old people wearing cowboy boots?”

“What? No.” Arthur shifts until he's more fully facing Merlin. “Contra dancing is descended from English country dancing, which was a formal, social dance; there were absolutely no cowboy boots involved.” 

“I thought you said it was French.”

“The _name_ was French.”

Merlin leans on one elbow, enjoying himself. “That doesn't make sense.”

Arthur rakes a hand through his hair, clearly getting worked up over this. “Forget about that. You have a caller, alright, who leads everyone through the dance with different calls—different steps—and there's a live band, and there are a lot of people who come and all dance with each other.”

“They're all dancing with each other at the same time?”

“Of course not,” Arthur says, giving him a withering look. “You have a partner, and then you'll have sets of two pairs, or long lines of partners down the hall. The music's all in counts of eight—” he starts beating a rhythm on his knees, “—so you just listen to the music and stay with the count—each step uses a different number of beats—and then...” He stops. “You're laughing at me.”

“I'm not,” Merlin protests, although the stretch of his smile gives the game away. “I just have no idea what any of that means.”

“It's like this,” Arthur starts again, holding his hands out with his palms facing each other, but Merlin stops him with a wave, actually laughing a little. 

“You should just show me how it works in real life.”

“Oh.” Arthur stops and looks at him. “That—yeah. You really want to learn?”

“Sure I do,” Merlin says comfortably, because the sun is warm and he can think of worse things than Arthur trying to teach him a few dance moves at the bottom of the steps. “Should I—”

“We'll leave after dinner, then,” Arthur decides. “Do you have the afternoon or evening off today?” 

“Evening,” Merlin says, confused. “What—”

“Good. I can have you back by midnight, easy. Do you have shoes you can wear? Flat soles, nothing that might scratch the floor.”

“Uh,” Merlin says, but Arthur's already standing and brushing off the back of his shorts.

“Just brush off a pair and bring those with you in a bag or something—don't wear them. I'll see you then.”

“...Yeah,” Merlin says to Arthur's back as Arthur goes back inside Camelot, then puts a hand over his eyes and laughs to himself for a long minute. He's going dancing. With Arthur. At least, he thinks, levering himself up and walking down the rest of the steps, heading for his cabin; at least it won't be a boring evening.

*

Arthur catches up with him after dinner when Merlin's just coming back down from his cabin, a sweatshirt and his messenger bag with extra shoes in hand.

“Got everything?” Arthur asks him. Merlin nods. “I'll meet you in a minute; I just have to grab something from my cabin. Don't move.”

No sooner has Arthur left, though, than Morgana finds Merlin.

“Going out?” she asks, tugging at the sweatshirt he's holding.

He drops it in surprise, and it swings from her hand. She quirks an eyebrow. “Arthur's taking me dancing,” he says, because she'll find out anyway, and there's no reason to hide it, after all. It isn't as if it's a date.

“What?” she breathes. Her fingers dig into the sweatshirt; she reaches out with her free hand and grabs his wrist. “Really? Don't joke with me, Merlin.”

“It's not a joke,” he says, trying to subtly tug his wrist free. She hold on, her nails digging a little into the thin skin there. “Why would it be a joke?”

“My brother,” she says, still sounding amazed but recovering quickly into smugness. “Taking someone dancing. _Voluntarily_. It's a miracle.”

Merlin tugs a little harder. “It's not a big deal,” he protests.

“Oh, Merlin,” Morgana purrs. “You have no idea, do you?”

Merlin wants to ask her what she means by that, but he catches sight of Arthur at the opening of the trail up to the tiny staff parking lot, waving one arm impatiently.

“Merlin!”

“Coming!” Merlin yells back, breaking free grabbing his sweatshirt back from Morgana and running before Arthur leaves him behind.

Arthur's already turned and started off up the short trail by the time Merlin catches up to him. “About time,” he says, and tosses something big and shiny at Merlin's face, which Merlin fumbles and nearly drops.

“What the hell,” Merlin says—that was one hundred percent unnecessary—and then he takes a proper look at the thing in his hands. “A _motorcycle helmet_?”

“You didn't know?” Arthur slants a look over at Merlin, looking surprised. 

“I—no.” Merlin thinks back, but he can't remember even seeing a motorcycle parked anywhere when he'd arrived.

“Well,” Arthur says. “Now you do.”

Merlin hasn't really let himself think about this in detail, not yet, but the thought of Arthur on a motorcycle—of riding a motorcycle with Arthur—brings it all roaring up to the front of his mind. Arthur's gray trousers have a carefully ironed crease, but they look soft, falling in a comfortably fitted way over his ass and thighs; his polo is dark red, its sleeves short enough that Merlin's treated to the sight of his biceps, the way his veins show against the skin of his forearm. Shit. This was probably a bad idea. 

“Here,” Arthur says, stopping at the very edge of the grassy lot, in front of a lumpy tarp. “Hold this.” He bundles his own helmet and a lumpy backpack into Merlin's arms, and Merlin clutches at it all with a frown.

“A tarp, really?”

“We're in the middle of the woods,” Arthur says dryly, pulling at a complicated system of cords and knots. “Do you really want to sit on bird shit and spiderwebs?”

Merlin sighs instead of answering, and watches Arthur unveil the bike. His knowledge of motorcycles is limited to knowing that they have two wheels and make _vrrmm_ noises, but Arthur's bike looks badass. It's black, gleaming in the fading sunlight; the chrome of its insides and headlight shine as if Arthur's just finished polishing it. Merlin wonders if any spiders would ever dare to make it their home, even if Arthur didn't wrap it up in a tarp.

“It's vintage,” Arthur tells him, smug as he finishes folding the tarp and tucks it carefully into one of the black leather saddlebags. “1951; you'd never see a bike made like this today. I restored it myself.” 

Merlin nods and lets Arthur snag the backpack from his arms, preoccupied more with the thought of Arthur bent over the handlebars and Arthur's thighs around the chrome than the pedigree of the bike. It's a distracting thought, distracting enough that he doesn't even realize what Arthur is doing until Arthur pulls his helmet out of Merlin's hands and Merlin sees that he's put more clothes on.

“Oh,” Merlin says weakly, because now Arthur is wearing a snug leather jacket—possibly also vintage, Merlin suspects—and it's like the entire universe is determined to raise Merlin's blood pressure until he passes out and dies. 

Arthur gives him a suspicious look, pulling his helmet on and fishing in his bag for gloves. _Dear God_ , thinks Merlin faintly; he doesn't ever really pray but he might be about to start. “Don't tell me you're scared to ride,” Arthur says, and the touch of superciliousness in his voice is enough to pull Merlin back from the brink. 

“Of course not,” he says. It's bluster, but Arthur doesn't need to know that. “Should have figured you for a secret delinquent bad boy. Next you'll be telling me about all your prison tattoos or whatever.” He yanks his own helmet on, fumbling with it until Arthur reaches over to settle it correctly.

“Well,” Arthur drawls, batting Merlin's hands away from the chin strap. “It's just the one, really, but we could talk about it if you want.”

Merlin is still processing that when Arthur _winks_ , the bastard, the complete bastard, and Merlin is very glad the helmet hides some of his embarrassing blush. 

“No, thanks,” he lies.

“Suit yourself,” Arthur says with a grin, and gives his backpack to Merlin again. “Put that on.”

“I don't want to carry all your shit,” Merlin grumbles. “What am I, your slave?”

Arthur swings a leg over the bike, and Merlin does his best not to ogle him too obviously. “Just my servant,” Arthur says, and then: “You're on the back, dipshit; you're the one who'll have room to carry it.”

Merlin fumbles with his bag and Arthur's, finally slinging his own messenger bag around himself so it hangs in front before slipping Arthur's backpack over his shoulders. 

“Sometime this century, Merlin,” Arthur says, revving the engine. “We're going to be late.” 

Merlin swallows and tries to hop on the bike. It takes him three attempts to actually get on, which makes Arthur laugh—rather cruelly, Merlin informs him—and then he's faced with an entirely new dilemma once he's on and has to decide where to hold on.

“Ready?” Arthur asks while Merlin's still dithering.

“No—” Merlin starts, and yelps when Arthur guns the engine anyway, sending them down the long, winding driveway. “Arthur!” He clutches for dear life at the frame of the bike, his fingers slipping a little; it works well enough for the first few minutes, until they reach the paved road and Arthur lets the motorcycle loose, roaring down the road. “Arthur! You asshole!”

Arthur laughs, the wind snatching the sound from his mouth so fast it's hard for Merlin to hear. “Stop being such a pussy!”

“Morgana would kill you for saying that!” Merlin shouts back, because it's the first thing that pops into his head; he'd punch Arthur or something if he didn't fear imminent death. 

“Just hold onto me, for fuck's sake!” Arthur yells. “You're going to fall off, idiot!”

Merlin makes a terrible expression, pulling all the muscles in his face in different directions, but he puts his hands gingerly on Arthur's waist, leaning forward a little more and glad as hell his messenger bag is keeping a decent distance between them. It feels like a more secure position, and although he's still half convinced they'll both die in a fiery accident, he manages a small whoop when they go around a corner and the forest opens up to give them a view of the ocean stretching out at the foot of granite cliffs, all purple and navy in the fading sunset. Arthur lets out a long, delighted yell.

“I love that turn!” Arthur calls back to Merlin, and Merlin just nods, forgetting Arthur can't see him. He's getting used to the motion of the bike, how it moves with Arthur's body, and he starts to lean with it, still terrified but willing to admit that he likes it. He likes it a lot, in fact, the wind rushing by with the scenery and the motorcycle roaring under them; he's starting to like riding behind Arthur, his life literally in Arthur's hands. He takes a deep breath, shivering a little as the ocean wind cuts through his shirt, and closes his eyes for a minute, to pretend he's pressed right up against Arthur, that they're driving not to some dance but to a rocky outlook where Arthur will lay him down on a blanket and let Merlin do wonderfully devious things to him.

It seems like a long time before Arthur slows down, turning off the main road onto a series of bumpy smaller ones, ending up on the outskirts of a little town with—Merlin suspects—a general store, a fishing wharf, and a main street that hasn't changed much since the fifties.

Arthur pulls into the full parking lot next to a building with white siding between tall windows and a peeling sign declaring it a 'GRANGE HALL' over the open front door. It's another of those _quaint_ places New England seems to breed like rabbits; the impression is only reinforced by the lively music spilling out from the open windows. Merlin slides off the bike, a little wobbly until he gets his legs back under him, and tugs the helmet off, running a hand through his hair, which probably does more damage to it than good. Arthur's hair is mussed too, but only a little; when he shakes his head it falls mostly back into place.

“Come on,” Arthur says, clapping a hand on Merlin's shoulder and pushing him toward the front door. “They've already started.” Merlin goes, hanging onto his helmet and feeling entirely off-kilter while Arthur pulls him into a corner of the narrow entryway and positions him facing the corner so that Arthur can dig through the backpack, getting his shoes and whatever else he's packed to bring along. The music is louder now, and Merlin can hear someone calling steps; he doesn't understand any of it. It's all English, he can tell, but for the first time he feels nervous.

There's no chance to worry about it, though, because Arthur is tugging the straps of the pack off of Merlin's shoulders and looping one over the hooks in front of where Merlin had been standing, hanging his jacket with it and tucking the helmets on the ground underneath. Merlin toes out of his sneakers and pulls his spare shoes out of his own bag—they aren't special dancing shoes like the ones Arthur's wearing now, but they're so worn they don't have any tread anymore, which Merlin had figured would mean they'd be free of little stones or sand or whatever else got tucked into the soles and scratched floors—while Arthur stretches his arms impatiently, waiting.

“Ready?” Arthur asks when Merlin straightens up, and Merlin makes a face.

“Probably not.”

Arthur snorts. “Yeah, well, get in there anyway,” he says, and follows Merlin all the way in, as if to make sure he can't escape.

They walk into a long hall with a stage raised at one end, where the band is set up on folding chairs, laughing with each other as they fiddle with their instruments and strings. The crowd is an odd mix, mostly older, with a few kids who look like they can't be older than sixteen thrown in. Half of them are wearing flowing clothes that look like they were hand-woven from organic hemp or at least purchased at the sort of shop where they also sell patchouli and tarot cards; the other half are wearing t-shirts and shorts. 

“Come on, they're just setting up a new dance,” Arthur says, pulling Merlin into the crowd. Everyone seems to know Arthur, clapping him on the back or kissing him on the cheek, and he returns all their greetings, looking more genuinely happy than Merlin's ever seen him. Merlin tucks himself quietly behind Arthur, coasting along unseen in his wake without really paying attention to what's going on around him, and finds himself paired up with Arthur for the dance. There's a short woman at the front of the hall with a baby in a sling and a pack of cards in her hand—the caller, Merlin assumes—and when she taps her microphone, the chatter stops. 

“Here's a new one,” she says, holding one of her cards up; “should be fun for you old hands out there.” Merlin sees the woman on the other side of Arthur nudge him with a smile, but there's no time to watch further because the caller is telling them, “Hands four from the top,” and he has to figure out how to get into the right position when he has no idea what that even means. 

Arthur tries to mutter instructions as they walk through the dance steps once it becomes clear how lost Merlin is. 

“Allemande _right_ , right, Merlin—your other right!”

It's the opposite of helpful, but Merlin's neighbors on either side are of much more use, pointing him in the right directions and grabbing his wrist to haul him into position when they're supposed to join hands together, all with the kind of good humor Merlin didn't think existed in the world. When the band joins in and the pace picks up, all of them dancing in earnest, it's easier than he expected to follow along, because when he _does_ put a foot wrong, it becomes obvious immediately, and his fellow dancers are quick to help him fix it. It's a short dance sequence, one they repeat over and over, and by the time they're finished, Merlin mostly has the hang of it. It's satisfying in ways he can't describe, the way everyone in the room moves together, stomping and clasping hands and sharing their obvious joy in the dance with strangers and friends alike. Once the music gets them moving, there's no divide between good or bad dancers, old hands or new ones; there's just the dance, and the neighbors they're sharing it with.

“See?” Arthur says, once the dance has finished while they're all applauding the band and each other. “That was fun.”

Merlin scoffs, but the warm look Arthur gives him tells him he wasn't as sneaky as he hoped in hiding how much he'd enjoyed it.

“Come on,” Arthur says. “Let's dance another.” 

Dancing gets a little easier each time—the dances themselves grow more complicated, but once Merlin's learned the basics, he stops worrying about each individual step. He even throws in a few fancy flourishes of his own, though he's nothing compared to Arthur. Arthur dances effortlessly, his shiny shoes smooth and assured in every step; the only clue he's exerting himself at all is the small dark patch of sweat that starts to grow on his shirt between his shoulder blades. Merlin watches him, especially when he pairs up with someone else; when Arthur dances with someone who knows what they're doing, it's breathtaking to see, both of them whirling in perfect coordination.

There's no way he'd ever let on he thinks that, though; especially not to Arthur. The next time they dance together, Arthur taking the lead position when they join the two long lines of dancers, Merlin tries a joke. 

“How come you're always the man?” he says with mock indignity. “Are you trying to say something about me, Arthur?”

It falls flat when Arthur only shrugs. “If it bothers you, next time you can lead; the spinning parts are more fun anyway, and you can't spin for shit.” 

“I can too spin,” Merlin says, though he knows he'll never be able to fit three extra spins in the two beats they're allowed for the turn, like some of the other dancers. 

An unexpected thought strikes him, and he trips over his own feet, nearly taking Arthur with him—he's suddenly occupied thinking about what it would be like to lead Arthur in a dance, and wondering if Arthur's ever worn a skirt like some of the other men in the room. 

(He'd asked one of his partners why, two dances before. “It's way more fun to spin in a skirt,” Geoffrey had told him, swishing his long navy skirt back and forth with his hands. “Plus, built in ventilation.” Merlin could see his point; his own jeans were already damp from all the trapped sweat.)

It shouldn't be hot, the thought of Arthur in a skirt, but it really, _really_ is, and Merlin has to concentrate extra hard on the caller while she leads them through the steps in an effort to distract himself. He's still shaky, but he knows he's getting better; counting to eight with the music is easy, and he's found the rhythm of it, feeling it thrum along inside his bones until each turn and change feels as easy as breathing. 

There's a thought growing in him that it's probably Arthur making him feel like a million bucks, like he can dance everyone else in the room under the table. It's almost imperceptible, how Arthur's constantly giving him little touches and pushes to make sure he knows what's coming next—not in any sort of controlling way, but as if they're tuned into each other, working together as a unit to outshine everyone else. He doesn't really mind. Every brush of Arthur's fingers on his skin is welcome; every hot touch when they swing together and Arthur's hand, braced on Merlin's waist, slips accidentally under where Merlin's shirt is rucked up over his hip. There's an unspoken rule that everyone is supposed to switch partners after each dance, but he ends up dancing with Arthur more and more as the night goes on. Unfair, maybe, but as the dances get more complicated Merlin wants Arthur to be there, experimenting with tricky steps added onto the basic calls and laughing, literally dancing circles around Merlin and everyone else in the room. He wants Arthur's palm in his, warm and sweaty, for the allemandes; he wants Arthur to spin by him while they do-si-do, their elbows knocking as they pass each other. 

Maybe it's because he's worn down with all the exercise—dancing, he's finding, is hard work. Maybe he was already vulnerable. But as the night draws down, Merlin finds himself struggling with all sorts of inappropriate thoughts. Nothing x-rated—he's been seduced by the magic of wholesome family fun for the evening—but in a way that's even worse: he keeps thinking about coming _back_ here with Arthur again, and again; he thinks about dancing with Arthur in other places, and watching Arthur smile so widely and openly his cheeks must hurt, and letting the music tie them together for a few precious hours. 

“Last dance, folks,” the caller says at last, and there's a sad, sharp pang that stabs through Merlin, even though his legs are aching. “Let's give it up for our band; an extra hand for Alice, who stepped in on the cello at the last minute when Heidi couldn't make it.” There's a swell of applause, and the band doesn't wait for it to die down before launching into the last song, something as slow and sweet as a summer sunset. 

“You want to leave?” Arthur asks Merlin. “Waltzes aren't as fun, and we should get back to camp.”

Merlin doesn't want to go; he wants the night to go on and on for hours more. He nods anyway. “Sure.” 

He goes to change his shoes, gathering up their things while Arthur shakes hands and exchanges hugs with the other dancers who are sitting the waltz out, promising to be back the next week.

“Bring your friend,” Merlin hears one older woman tell Arthur. “He's an excellent partner; we'll make a dancer of him yet.” He hides his smile in his shoulder, and misses whatever Arthur says in response.

Despite all the goodbyes, Arthur still somehow beats Merlin outside, leading the way over toward where the motorcycle is sheltered under a row of maple trees. The air is cool—almost cold, to Merlin, who's still covered with a thin layer of sweat from dancing—and Merlin pulls his sweatshirt from his bag, shrugging it on and over his head. 

“So?” Arthur asks, handing him a helmet. 

“So what?” Merlin shoots back, enjoying the small annoyance that passes over Arthur's face. “It was great,” he says, relenting. “Really great.” He doesn't have words to describe any of it more eloquently than that, the fading thrill of the dance and the way he feels contentedly tired now, the kind of exhaustion that only comes from something so enjoyable it tricks the body into forgetting it's working hard until after it's done. He'd love to come back, but that seems like too much to ask; they're friends now, he thinks, but he isn't sure where that puts them, whether he's allowed to want to go out dancing together again.

“Good,” Arthur says. He pulls his helmet on quickly, but Merlin still catches the small beginnings of a smile on his face before it's obscured. “Let's go.”

It feels routine to swing onto the bike behind Arthur, his hands going automatically to Arthur's waist in a movement that's familiar now, after an evening spent touching him exactly like that—light, nothing more than friendly, but with a purpose nonetheless. The purpose isn't anything more than steadiness, a certain security, but that's enough right now, all Merlin needs. It's enough to be out in the wide night under the trees and stars, the only light around the lone headlight of the motorcycle in front of them. 

He doesn't notice that Arthur takes a different road until Arthur slows the bike and stops, pulling off the shoulder of the road. 

“I don't want to go back quite yet,” Arthur says once they're both off the bike in answer to Merlin's silent question. “I thought we could just...sit for a while.”

They've stopped at some sort of lookout, where the shoulder grows wide enough for a car to park and there are a few sculpted granite slabs artfully arranged as benches. Arthur sits on one, pulling his feet up, and Merlin perches on the other, looking out at the view. It's probably gorgeous in the daytime. There's no moon out, though, and the stars only give enough light to make it clear that the ocean is below them; there's a bell buoy sounding somewhere in the distance, ringing out quiet and distant, and a group of tiny lights on the water Merlin thinks are boats until he realizes they aren't moving—houses, then, on an island somewhere out there in the dark. 

“We can go, if you'd rather,” Arthur says, after they've both been quiet for too long.

“No,” Merlin says quickly. “No, this is—this is fine. I'm fine.” The breeze cuts through his sweatshirt, but he folds his arms his arms across his chest and sets his jaw. 

“I like to stop here on my way home,” Arthur says. His voice is soft enough that it's hard for Merlin to hear; he shifts closer on his rock. “It's good to clear my head before I go back.” 

“Yeah,” Merlin says, which sounds stupid even to his own ears. “I mean, you're under a lot of pressure.” He thinks about Uther, making it clear exactly how hard Arthur's been working on the ACA documentation; about the circles that have grown under Arthur's eyes.

“It's not so bad,” Arthur says. “I just like to have a couple of minutes where I don't have documentation and paperwork to worry about, or fixing the sink in Camelot that leaks, or answering phone calls from overprotective parents.”

“Or fishing campers out of the lake when their sailboat capsizes. Reprimanding CITs when they follow up on a love note from a camper.”

“That's the fun part,” Arthur says, and Merlin can hear the almost-smile in his voice before it's gone again. “But here—I can just sit in the dark and look out at the ocean, and I don't have to make sure anything's perfect at all. It already is.”

“You don't have to be perfect.” 

“Everything has to be perfect. Including me.”

“Arthur—” 

“The ACA accreditation is a big deal, Merlin.”

“I know,” Merlin says. “I know that. But you can't—”

“My father raised Camp Albion up from nothing,” Arthur says, almost absently, as if he's reciting a familiar fairy tale. “It was a wreck when he found it and took it over. Did you know the original buildings used to be part of a Girl Scout camp, way back when? They'd run it into the ground, but he rebuilt it. We're one of the best camps in the region now; people look to us as an example.” 

“So you've got nothing to worry about,” Merlin says bracingly. Arthur huffs an unwilling laugh.

“It means I have _more_ to worry about.” 

“Stop that,” Merlin says, because he doesn't know what else to say. He kicks his leg out, poking Arthur in the shin with his toes. “Stop thinking. You're supposed to be clearing your head, remember?”

“Stop thinking about the quarter,” Arthur says, dry. “Right.”

“Exactly,” Merlin tells him, feeling inexplicably pleased, and lapses into watchful silence, pretending to look out at the dark view when he's really studying Arthur in the shadows, memorizing his frown and the exact way he fills out the shoulders of his jacket. If Arthur notices the attention, he doesn't say anything, and Merlin's left free to wish he could cross over and smooth out the lines on Arthur's forehead with a careful thumb. He doesn't move, though, and neither does Arthur; no cars go past. There's nothing but the rustle of the leaves around them and the scattered noises of a forest at night, overlaying the distant susurration of the water far below.

The glow of Arthur's watch when he checks the time—later, much later, after they've been sitting so long Merlin's ass has gone cold and a little numb on the rock—startles Merlin, enough that his hands and feet jerk with surprise.

“We should go,” Arthur says, and gets as far as standing up, helmet in hand, before he stops again, still looking out at the ocean. Merlin stands with him, and waits.

“My father's going to retire soon,” Arthur says without looking at Merlin. “He's leaving me in charge of the camp.”

Merlin blinks, and looks more closely at the tense way Arthur holds himself. 

“Hey,” he says, coming up to nudge one shoulder against Arthur's. “He wouldn't do that if he didn't think you could handle it. He's scary—” Arthur twists his mouth and looks at Merlin, which Merlin silently cheers as a win, “—but it's obvious he loves the camp. He trusts you to look after it.” 

The twist in Arthur's mouth goes a little sour, and he turns away, turning his helmet over in his hands. “I don't think _love_ and _trust_ are the words you're looking for.” Merlin has to strain to catch the words. 

“Arthur,” Merlin says, grabbing Arthur's elbow and stepping around to look him in the eyes. “You're going to be a brilliant camp director. Really.”

There's a long, dizzy moment, their faces bare inches apart, when Merlin thinks, _kiss him, you fool!_ , but he doesn't move.

“Fat lot you know about it,” Arthur says at last, but the sourness is gone from him; the tension lessened. “You can barely lead your campers in song.”

“I'm getting much better at that,” Merlin objects, following Arthur back to the bike. “Gwen's teaching me the words to Boom Chicka Boom.” 

“Merlin,” Arthur says, and Merlin can tell he's smothering a laugh now. “Those _are_ the words; they're the only words in the whole song.”

“Lies,” Merlin says airily, snapping the buckle of his helmet. “There are some _oh yeah_ s as well. And an _uh huh_.”

“Hopeless,” Arthur tells him, pulling his own helmet on. “You should get her to teach you the coffee pot song.”

Merlin rearranges the bags he's carrying and mounts up behind Arthur. “That's a devil song,” he says. “It's terrible and a tongue-twister and I refuse.” 

“Hopeless,” Arthur repeats, chuckling, and sends them zooming back off into the night. Merlin tucks his chin and holds onto Arthur and tries not to press too closely as they wind their way through the hills back to camp, because he's not sure he could ever bring himself to un-stick from Arthur otherwise.

*

Merlin turns twenty-one on a Wednesday. He gets three handmade, beautifully atrocious cards, which he tapes with happy pride over his bed, and Gwen gives him ten Magic cards out of her own deck.

“To start your collection,” she says. “I have copies of all these, anyway. We'll get you playing before the summer's over!”

He laughs, delighted. “I'm not so sure about that,” he says, but the hug he gives her is extra-tight.

It isn't how he'd imagined his twenty-first birthday going—in his head, it had always featured an overabundance of alcohol, and raucous singing, and not coming home until dawn, if he came home at all; that had always seemed like what one was _supposed_ to do to mark the occasion. Instead he's in the middle of nowhere, and while there still is singing, it's a hundred kids under the age of sixteen caterwauling a special camp birthday song at him. He drinks actual juice instead of dirty jungle juice, teaches his cabin a silly card trick when they beg him for it, and by ten pm he's already called his mom, replied to Will's _HAPPY BIRTHDAY ASSHOLE_ text, and is seriously considering bed. It's actually all rather lovely until Arthur appears out of the dark as he's walking back from the lone picnic table with cell service. 

“Happy birthday,” Arthur says, falling in step and knocking their shoulders together.

“Thanks.” Merlin steals a glance at Arthur. He hasn't seen much of Arthur since they went dancing, but Arthur smiles at him now when he catches his eye across the mess hall or when they cross each other on a path, a warm smile that sets the tips of Merlin's ears to tingling. Arthur's wearing a thin sweatshirt with the Camp Albion dragon over the left breast and a pair of cargo shorts with a hole in the back pocket. He looks as happy as he ever does, and Merlin's almost—almost—sure that if he leaned in now and kissed Arthur, Arthur would kiss him back. The temptation isn't quite enough, though; _almost_ isn't sure enough for him. Not yet.

Arthur stops by the kitchen stairs, beckoning Merlin to follow. “Come on,” he says. “This is one of the best camp traditions; Nimueh will have left us something.”

“Left us what?” Merlin asks—cautiously, because Nimueh leaving something could mean all manner of things; he can think of six possibilities off the top of his head which would be distinctly unpleasant. He follows Arthur into the kitchen anyway, hunching his shoulders as he goes. The equipment throws strange shadows, and everything is dark in creepy ways, nothing like the calm night outside. 

“Over here,” Arthur says, which explains nothing until he opens the walk-in and flips the light, leaving Merlin blinking in the sudden brightness. “Happy birthday.” 

He's holding out an enormous piece of chocolate cake in one hand when he turns around, and two forks in the other—Merlin hadn't even see him grab the forks as they walked in. 

“So the tradition is for you to eat cake on someone else's birthday?” he asks, but he's smiling too hard for the words to have any sting as he reaches for a fork. 

“Of course,” Arthur tells him, very solemn. “I am the program director, after all. It's my prerogative.” 

Arthur's laugh is contagious, and Merlin thinks—damn the rest of it, damn the drinking, damn everything but this. This, here with Arthur, alone in the kitchen on a summer night with a piece of cake between them: this is the best birthday he could have ever hoped to have. 

“Let's go out on Saturday,” Arthur says while Merlin is licking the last crumbs from his fork. “You've got twenty-four hours off, I checked already.”

“You checked the schedule to see when I had my time off?”

“Of course.”

“Oh,” Merlin says. “Um. Sure. Did you mean out—”

“Into town,” Arthur says. “Have you been yet? There's a great ice cream place you'd like.”

“I haven't.” Merlin can't help the smile pulling hard across his face. “I'd love to.”

“I'll pick you up after dinner, then,” Arthur says, and in the light he looks almost bashful, all his bravado stripped away.

“It's a date,” Merlin says, because he can't resist—the words fill him with a delicious anticipation, warm where it tingles out from his elbows to his fingertips, and they stand grinning at each other like fools until the timer on the light goes out and startles both of them. 

Merlin jumps; Arthur laughs, and whatever moment they'd had is broken.

“Saturday, then,” Merlin says as they walk back up to the cabin area, just to check; he loves the way the words send a thrill through him.

“Saturday,” Arthur confirms, pausing just before he turns off the main path toward the director's cabin. “Happy birthday, Merlin.” 

The smile Merlin carries with him back to his own cabin lasts him all week; every time he feels it threatening to fade, all he does is think back on the shape of Arthur's lips closing around a forkful of cake, and it comes rushing back in, the anticipation growing every time. 

Saturday, though, doesn't quite turn out as expected.

“Let's go, Merlin!” Morgana yells at him when she sees him skulking around the office in his best jeans and his favorite shirt, waiting for Arthur.

“Go?”

She takes him by the shoulders, steering him out the door and down to the car where Percy, Leon, and Lance are already waiting, Gwen climbing in to sit on Lance's lap. “Have you already forgotten that you're freshly twenty-one? We're taking you drinking.” 

“But,” Merlin starts, “I was supposed to—with Arthur—”

“Arthur's coming too, don't worry,” she says, maneuvering him into the front seat with a solid shove. “He'll meet us there; there's no room in the car.”

“But—” Merlin says, but she slams the door closed on him, and he's left finishing the sentence softly into the rolled-up window. “We were going to have a date.”

He tries his best not to hold it against them—it's not as if any of them knew, after all, and he does appreciate their efforts, their friendship. It's obvious, though, that he can't summon the appropriate level of enthusiasm on the half-hour ride, his head leaned up against the window while they all chatter around him; Gwen reaches around the seat to jab him in the back of the neck when they pull into the parking lot of a bar that's lit too darkly to be anything but a dive or the sort of place where they charge twenty bucks a shot. “What?” Merlin asks, but he doesn't really need an answer: Arthur's unmistakeable, hip angled against his bike and his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket.

“Oh, go on,” Morgana tells him, stopping just inside the parking lot. “Just don't slip away before we get inside; we've come especially to sing loudly and embarrass you.”

“Sure,” Merlin says, scrambling out of the car. “Whatever you say!”

Arthur walks over to meet Merlin after Morgana drives off looking for a space. “Hey,” he says, hands still in his pockets. “Sorry about all of this.” 

“It's alright,” Merlin says, surprised to find he means it. He pats Arthur on the chest. “You can buy me a drink!”

Arthur chuckles and jerks his head toward the bar. “Lead on, before the rest of them get in and clean the barkeeper out. What's your opinion on little umbrellas?”

“The more, the merrier,” Merlin says, just to see Arthur laugh again, and jostles in a bit too close as they go through the door. Arthur doesn't move away, though; Arthur jostles him back, still smiling, and pulls him to a pair of stools at the far end of the bar. 

“That takes all the fun out of ordering frilly drinks for you,” he says. “What'll you have, then?”

“Um,” Merlin says, stalling. The bar's high-end enough that it puts him just on the edge of uncomfortable; the clientele all seem normal, but everything is sleek and polished in a way that speaks more loudly than any of them. “I guess—”

“He'll have a Sex on the Beach,” Morgana says, coming up behind them to sling one arm around Arthur's shoulders and rub her other hand through Merlin's hair the wrong way, making it stick out in crazy directions. 

“Morgana!” Arthur says, sounding scandalized. 

“I'm only trying to set the proper tone,” she says, patting Arthur on the cheek without taking her arm from around his shoulders. 

“Get the hell off of me.” 

“Shan't. Tell him you want Sex on the Beach, Merlin,” she says, giving him an outrageous wink. Merlin can feel his cheeks flaming hot with a blush; he puts both hands up to smooth his hair back down, hiding his face. 

“Morgana,” Arthur says. “Go away.”

“Are you afraid we'll get poor, tender Merlin drunk?” she asks. “We still could.”

“I'm sure he doesn't need much help,” Lance puts in from where he's been watching the whole show from behind Morgana. “He's got the look of a lightweight about him.”

Merlin knows a challenge when he hears one, but he just shakes his head. One day, he'd love to take Lance up on that, but not now, not when Arthur is sitting close enough that Merlin can smell him: warm and clean, with just a touch of something spicy under the soap. 

“So,” Arthur murmurs, once the others have left to point and laugh at them from a table. “This isn't exactly how I pictured things going.”

“I thought there'd be more tiny umbrellas,” Merlin agrees. “Less mocking. Or—hang on, I remember being promised ice cream. And don't try to sell me on a beer and ice cream float, because I've had a friend try to drag me aboard that train before and let me tell you now, it isn't happening.”

That makes Arthur laugh, and Merlin ducks his head, biting back against his smile and the pleased feeling taking up too much room in his chest. 

“One drink for appearances' sake, and then we can sneak away from the chaperones,” Arthur decides. “Cape Codder, please,” he tells the barman. “Merlin?”

“Same,” Merlin says quickly, showing his ID with more than a little smugness when the bartender beckons for it. He gives himself a little high five under the table when it passes inspection, and sticks his tongue out at Arthur when Arthur rolls his eyes. 

He has no idea what he's just ordered, but this way he can pretend to be a little less clueless than he is about fancy drinks. It's better than he expected—he'd been mostly sure Arthur wouldn't get something horrible, but then again, Arthur probably thought terrible things made him a better person. The drink goes down as smoothly as their conversation; so smoothly, in fact, that Merlin's finished before Arthur's made it through half of his. He gets another one, reasoning that this way they'll finish at the same time, and has to fight Arthur off from trying to pay for that one, too. 

“Fine,” Arthur says, disgruntled when the bartender takes Merlin's cash instead of his. “But I'm buying your ice cream.” 

“Damn skippy,” Merlin agrees, happily tinkling the ice in his glass, and lets the fizzing tingle of anticipation buoy him up and forward, edging closer toward Arthur even as Arthur leans further in toward him. 

By the time they slip out of the bar, unseen by the others, Merlin is teetering on the edge of tipsy despite all his best intentions. It's a gorgeous night—the town is right on the sea, and there's a cool salt smell in the breeze raking through his hair and giving him a shiver. He starts toward Arthur's bike, but Arthur stops him with a hand on his arm. 

“It's just down the street,” Arthur says. “It's easier to walk.”

When he lets go, Merlin moves quickly, feeling bold; he catches Arthur's fingers in his before Arthur can pull away, letting their hands dangle easily between them. It feels odd, to be touching Arthur deliberately like this, and the hitch in Arthur's steps at the touch sends a little shot of adrenaline whizzing around inside Merlin's head. 

There's no open acknowledgment between them that they're almost holding hands, but it's easy to fall in step, strolling slowly down the narrow street which looks like it could have come from any movie set pretending to be New England: there are flowers overflowing the window boxes under elegant street lights, and the signs over the shops look like they've come straight out of an antique store. The ice cream place is only a few blocks down, brightly lit and crowded with kids and couples.

“You'll like this place,” Arthur says. “Ced's an old friend of mine; he makes all his own stuff, and the flavor names are—well, you'll see.”

They're close enough to be able to read the name written in tall pink letters over the front of the store, and Merlin turns to Arthur in disbelief. 

“Shake's Pier?”

Arthur grins and—just slightly—tightens his grip, tugging Merlin along. “Just wait.”

“Pride and Pistachio,” Merlin reads off the chalkboard menu to the right of the serving window. “Arthur, what...oh my God. Cone of Seven Cherries—that one's just _bad_ —Robinson Caramel? Tess of the Gooeyvilles?”

“Jude the Impure is one of my favorites. Middlemocha's pretty good too, though.”

“This is terrible,” Merlin says. “How am I ever supposed to decide?”

“Arthur!” The shout comes from inside the shop—a floppy-haired man with a long nose leans out from the serving window after handing two cones off to a pair of wide-eyed kids still too young for camp, waving at them and beaming.

“Hey Cedric,” Arthur says, letting go of Merlin's hand as he pushes forward through the crowd. “Business is good, I see.”

“Business is excellent,” Cedric says. “As it always is. I keep telling you, Arthur; I'm a magic man. My business is good even in the frozen depths of January. But don't be rude, who's the delightful man you've brought with you?”

“Ced, this is Merlin; he's working at Albion this year. Merlin, Cedric. We were in school together.”

“Merlin,” Cedric says, drawing the name out and leaning further out of the window to grab Merlin's hand in both of his and shake it. He doesn't immediately let go. “How did you end up out here in the wild woods with us?” He grins when Merlin shifts his weight uncomfortably. “Shy, eh? I like a man with a bit of mystery. Do you like caramel, Merlin?” 

“I suppose,” Merlin says, awkward, and Cedric gives him a wink and a squeeze of the hand before letting go. 

“I have just what you're looking for, then. Sweet things want sweet things, am I right, Merls?”

“I think Merlin can order his own ice cream,” Arthur says. His voice is amused, but there's an edge to it that gives Merlin pause. 

Cedric doesn't notice, busy sorting through the freezers. “Hmm, but something with a bite to it, I think. You look like the kind of man who enjoys a bit of danger. How about...” He trails off, scooping a liberal amount of ice cream into a waffle cone, and hands it off with a flourish. “Sister Ginger, on the house. Seduction assured, chorus line optional.” 

“Thanks,” Merlin says, taking the cone and tasting it carefully. “This is—really good, actually.” It's a surprising flavor, almost shocking; instead of the sticky sweetness he's used to, there's a punch of ginger laid over a smooth caramel-vanilla, almost sultry. 

“Course it is,” Cedric says. “Arthur, the usual? Nothing but the best for my finest customer.”

Arthur nods, but there's a tightness in his jaw as he takes the offered cone and hands over a few bills. He hustles Merlin away from the shop, Cedric calling a merry farewell after them, moving too quickly until Merlin, working off a hunch, spins to face him, walking backward and forcing Arthur to slow down. 

“What was all that about?” he asks. There's ice cream dripping over his knuckles, and he does his best to catch it with his tongue before it gets too messy. 

“What was what about?”

“You know what. Back there.”

“I've no idea what you mean,” Arthur says, but Merlin catches him looking at the way he's licking his ice cream, which—Merlin does a little jig in his head. He can work with that. He licks a slow stripe up and over the top of his cone, before closing his lips around it, taking a sucking bite. This is probably the least sexy move he's ever used, but Arthur's staring openly now, so he'll take it as a win.

“You were jealous,” Merlin says, bending his wrist to swipe at the ice cream which has dripped down his chin. They're back at the parking lot already, nearly at Arthur's bike, and Merlin wishes there was a little less in his cone; he could probably drive Arthur wild if he could just lick around the edge of it. “You thought Cedric was hitting on me.”

“I didn't,” Arthur says automatically, and Merlin reaches for him with a sticky hand, catching his fingers in the front of Arthur's button-down. He doesn't even think he's tipsy anymore, though this almost feels like it; there's a giddiness bubbling in him, zipping along his veins, knocking down the last of his hesitation as he yanks Arthur in.

Arthur tastes dark, like cherries and chocolate, and his kisses are sweeter than any ice cream. Merlin holds on tight to his shirt, keeping them close; he's so focused on that, on the rub of the zipper of Arthur's open jacket against his chest, that he forgets about his ice cream entirely until it's sliding over his hand, tipping out of the cone and falling before he can react. 

“Shit,” he mumbles against Arthur's lips. “My ice cream—”

“Fuck the ice cream,” Arthur says, grabbing Merlin before he can pull away, and...well, it's a lost cause already. Merlin doesn't need much encouragement to step back into the kiss, throwing both arms around Arthur this time, ice cream forgotten on the ground. Distantly, he hears another soft splat—Arthur's cone, he assumes—but that's so much less important than discovering the way Arthur tastes underneath the chocolate, the strength in his arm as he maneuvers Merlin around until Merlin's backed up against the motorcycle, the chrome cold against his ass.

“Wanted this,” Merlin gasps when Arthur's hips press against his. He's bent back over the bike, one foot just coming off the ground. He hooks it around Arthur's calf, encouraging. “Wanted you— _Arthur_.”

Arthur pulls back—not far, just enough for them to breathe. “We shouldn't. Not here.”

“Then we should find somewhere else.” Merlin slides his hands up Arthur's chest, under his jacket, unwilling to let go just yet. 

Arthur shivers. “Right.” He strokes his thumbs across Merlin's collarbones, leans back down to give Merlin one more lingering kiss. “Right. Before they all come out and see us.”

The ride to camp is a blur. It passes in a rush of cold air on Merlin's face and Arthur's warmth pressed all down his front, and all Merlin remembers later is the way he'd grown harder and harder as the motorcycle growled under them, his erection snug against Arthur's ass. He has his arms locked tight around Arthur's chest, and he only partly lets go once they roll—as quietly as they can—into camp. Arthur doesn't bother to cover his bike again—he just kills the engine and grabs Merlin, gathering him in as if he's afraid Merlin might disappear if they stop touching. They stumble together, passing the trees and darkened buildings without noticing them; all their concentration fixed on the brushing skin between them, the ways their bodies part and meet. Arthur's damp palm is locked against Merlin's own, and Merlin clutches at Arthur's shoulder with his free hand, following blindly through the dark. When Arthur stumbles, Merlin crashes against him, pressing even closer, neither of them caring about the bruises they're accumulating. 

“In here,” Arthur whispers, pulling Merlin through into a building. The boat house, Merlin realizes belatedly. There isn't much room inside, but it's not as if they want space: all Merlin wants is this, the rough wood of the door scratching against his back through his shirt, Arthur's hands locked around his wrists, Arthur's lips hot against his skin. He locks the door with a thought, lacing magic close around the latch to keep it shut, and digs his fingers into whatever cracks in Arthur he can reach. 

Arthur's shirt ends up somewhere behind them, missing a button and probably caught on a paddle or a rack of life jackets; Merlin's is rucked up to his armpits, uncomfortable, but he isn't willing to let go of Arthur to haul it over his head. There's too much skin he can feel, too many muscles to trace as they flex beneath the pads of his fingers, and all the time Arthur is kissing him stupid. It's too messy; beneath Arthur's lips the hard slick line of his teeth is too prominent; they're both too hungry for it to bother with finesse—but that only makes Merlin more desperate for everything he can get, for everything Arthur will give him. 

When Arthur's teasing hands sweep low across his hips and belly, pausing just above his fly in silent question, Merlin's breath hitches in a gasp. “ _Yes_ ,” he says. “Fuck, Arthur, yeah—”

He can feel the tiny shudder that goes through Arthur at that; he swears again, and helps Arthur fumble his zip open. “Can I,” he asks, and stops, digging his fingers hard into Arthur's biceps as Arthur runs a careful touch along the line of his cock. Fuck, he's hard; he's so, so hard, and there's no blood left in the rest of his body to run his lungs or his ears, let alone the parts of his brain and mouth which form words. “Arthur—please, let me touch you.”

“For the love of God,” Arthur says, wrapping his hand more fully around Merlin's cock and pulling—slow, so slowly, _fuck_ , and too dry in a way that sends shivers dancing all down Merlin's spine—“yes, Jesus fuck, get on with it already.” 

“Bossy,” Merlin says, but the word gets lost halfway in a hiccuping gasp. Arthur's good at this. He moves with poise, intent, and Merlin wants to break him; the desire seizes him suddenly, unlooked-for, but it displaces everything else, until the only thing in Merlin's mind is an image of Arthur naked in every way, falling apart before him— _because_ of him. 

Fuck.

Arthur's jeans are just tight enough that it's a struggle to unbutton them and push them out of the way, but Merlin manages, and then Arthur's cock is hot and strange in his hand, different enough from his own that his fingers stutter when he tries to stroke it, unsteady. Arthur doesn't seem to care, though. Arthur has a hand at Merlin's nape, hauling him back up and in for a kiss, and their knuckles knock as they jerk each other off; so close and so good that Merlin knows he isn't going to last long at all. It'll all be over too soon, and instead of regret he throws himself straight into a competitive frenzy, trying every twist, every trick he's ever learned on himself to finish Arthur first. It might have worked, even, but Merlin is weak for the broken noises he's wresting from Arthur—Arthur, he's learning, isn't vocal, but the tiny sounds Arthur does make are driving him wild; as close as Arthur is, Merlin's closer. 

It comes up on him suddenly, his orgasm; knocks him down and wipes him clean before he can croak out any sort of warning. His spunk is warm on his stomach, but Arthur's hands are hotter as they wipe it away, and Merlin sags back against the door and groans helplessly as he watches Arthur stroke himself off—fast, desperate—with Merlin's come. 

The most Merlin can manage is hanging onto Arthur's hips, digging in his thumbs in something like encouragement, but Arthur doesn't seem to need anything more: his whole body jerks like a hinge closing at the waist as he starts to come, one hand wrapped tight around Merlin's shoulder as he works himself through it and out the other side. Merlin holds on and drinks it in. Arthur's never looked so beautiful as he does now, like this, coming all over Merlin's hips, his naked skin shining with just a little sweat under the warm moonlight sneaking through the cracks in the walls. 

They collapse together slowly, sliding down until they're both sitting, leaning up against the wall and each other, their legs tangled and their asses probably filthy from the dirt on the floor. Merlin doesn't care. He doesn't care that his shirt is still bunched up under his arms, or that there's jizz all over him, drying on his stomach and thighs. Nothing is as important as Arthur's head tipped against his own, or Arthur's hand wrapped gently over his leg, just above the knee. 

“Jesus,” Arthur says at last. There's a growly little rasp beneath his words, like he hasn't totally come down from the high of his arousal, and Merlin tightens his grip on Arthur's elbow. “That was...”

“Yeah,” Merlin agrees. He sounds dopey, but there's no time for embarrassment to flower before Arthur's kissing him again—more gently, lingering until Merlin's dizzy from it. 

“Really,” Arthur murmurs. “I mean it.” 

“So do I.” Merlin leans up, shifting until he can reach Arthur's mouth more easily, despite the awkward angle. What he'd really like to do is straddle Arthur's lap, kiss him slow and stupid while they rock together until they're hard again, but his jeans are a bind around his knees, so he settles for hooking his legs across Arthur's and getting his arms around Arthur's shoulders. 

He isn't sure how long they sit there, necking like blushing campers, but it's long enough that he's got a crick in his spine and his lips are puffy when they stop. Arthur has a hand braced low on Merlin's ribs, and Merlin doesn't think twice about settling against Arthur's chest, where his head fits exactly right against Arthur's shoulder. 

“Morgana will kill us if she finds us here,” Arthur says at last. 

“She won't find us.”

Arthur sweeps his thumb across Merlin's skin, back and forth. “Merlin. We can't stay here all night.” 

Merlin sighs, but Arthur has a point. Technically, Arthur was back on duty at midnight; Merlin has no idea what time it is, but he suspects midnight is long past. They're both stiff in climbing to their feet. Merlin feels awkwardness creeping into his skin, gnawing apart the last threads of the mood, and he fusses with his pants, unsure where he's allowed to look until Arthur makes an unhappy noise and brushes his ass off in a businesslike manner that's entirely hilarious. He gives Merlin a dirty look at first when Merlin starts to laugh, but Merlin just pulls him in and kisses him quiet, pressing a smile to Arthur's lips until Arthur gives a rueful chuckle. 

Once they've put themselves more or less back together, it's the work of a moment to push the door open, removing the little enchantment he'd used to hold it closed, and then they're back out into the open air, the moon still bright above them and clouds creeping carelessly in from the west as if nothing's happened, nothing's changed. Merlin's not sure who reaches out first, but their hands catch hold of each other; he treasures that warmth against the night's chill. 

“Merlin,” Arthur says, stopping where the short path to the director's cabin breaks off from the main trail. “I had a really good time tonight.”

“So did I.” 

Arthur hasn't let go of Merlin's hand. “I want you to promise you believe me.” 

“Yes,” Merlin says, laughing a little in his confusion but cautious; this isn't heading in any direction he'd expected.

“We can't—I can't go out with you again, not like this,” Arthur says, and it's exactly like a suckerpunch. 

“Fuck, Merlin, don't look at me like that. The ACA committee's coming at the end of the week, it's a wonder my father let me have the evening tonight. And he...” he pauses, hesitating. “I know it sounds dumb, like I'm afraid to break the rules. But this camp really is my whole life; it's my job. I have to be—”

“Professional,” Merlin says. “I understand.” 

Arthur looks a little less miserable. “Do you?”

The funny thing is, Merlin thinks, is that he actually does. Fuck, he's drunk pretty deeply from the Kool-Aid in this place without even realizing it. “I know you've got a reputation on the line. Just promise me something.” 

“Anything,” Arthur says, and Merlin reaches for his other hand. 

“When camp is finished in two weeks—when all the campers are gone and no one from the ACA or whoever is lurking around—promise me we can do this again.”

“My job isn't over with the summer, it's—”

“Arthur.”

Arthur blows out an exasperated breath, but he's smiling. “Fine. Yes. _After_ all the campers are gone.” 

“Right,” Merlin says, and tries to go in for a good night kiss. Arthur's quick though, and Merlin's lips land on his cheek instead. 

“After the campers are gone, Merlin,” Arthur reminds him, his smile growing when Merlin makes a rude noise between his lips and teeth. 

“I'm holding you to that,” Merlin says, and leans in close to add, quietly: “I'm going to take you apart; use my mouth to melt you down.” He's near enough to catch the soft hiss of breath between Arthur's teeth, and he pats Arthur cheerfully on the cheek. “Think about it,” he says, backing up the path toward his cabin. 

Arthur gives him the finger, and Merlin blows him an outrageous kiss in reply.

*

Giddiness lasts Merlin through the rest of his night and halfway through brushing his teeth the next morning. _Arthur_ , he keeps thinking. Beautiful, strange, completely freakish Arthur, with weird notions of dates and even stranger notions of professionalism—Merlin can't fault him for it, really, considering where he's coming from, the life he's grown up in. Merlin understands that camp is Arthur's life, and that camp always comes first—

Merlin pauses, his toothbrush still stuck in a corner of his mouth, and stares at his reflection in the mirror.

Camp always comes first for Arthur.

He spits out the foam, frowning as he rinses his toothbrush. It's jumping too far ahead of himself, but he can't help but wonder what Arthur had really meant; if he'd understood Arthur correctly. Arthur hadn't seemed the type for a fling or a string of 'one-night-stands' with one person, but now that doubt has bitten into him, Merlin can't shake it. Arthur had implied that camp never ended for him—the campers would leave, but his father would still be around; the ACA visit would pass, but there'd always be more work for him to do. Had Arthur meant that fooling around with Merlin had to happen in between crises, a quick release of the pressure? Merlin had assumed he'd want to try his hand at a relationship but maybe...maybe that was wrong. Maybe Merlin's read the whole situation wrong, overcome with sex-befuddlement and the bias of his own perceptions. 

He sits on the far rail of the bathhouse, on the side nearest to the trees, ostensibly supervising campers but in truth not doing much but staring into the middle distance while he turns his memories over and over in his mind, searching for clues. It's chance, pure and simple, that he leans back a little farther than usual and catches a flash of color out of the corner of his eye. 

“Who's back there?” He leans back further, curling a hand around the railing under him so he won't actually fall backward and craning his head around. “Val? What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” Val says. He's one of the older campers, in with Percy and Leon in Cabin Galahad; he's only fifteen, but he's already broad-shouldered and at least a head taller than Merlin. He scuffs a foot along the ground, and Merlin swings his legs up and over the railing, hopping down on the other side. 

“You know you're not supposed to be back here.”

“Yeah,” Val says, vaguely. “I'm just admiring the scenery, you know?” 

“You'll have to admire it somewhere else,” Merlin says. The far side of the bathhouse is strictly verboten for campers—there's no way to see it from the rest of the cabin area, making it perfect for campers trying their hands at a stealthy tryst; not many of them try to sneak back, though, much to the counselors' disappointment. Merlin had sat with a gleeful Morgana and Elena on a picnic table in the dark for hours during the first week of camp, waiting with high-powered flashlights at the ready after a tip-off that two campers from Cabins Geraint and Gaheris were planning to sneak out. The campers hadn't showed, and Merlin can't really blame them; the back of the bathhouse is pretty creepy. He's run into more than a few spiderwebs fetching cleaning supplies out of the hidden closet back there. 

“Come on.” He squints at the ground while Val's walking over to him, blinks, then bends down.

“Those've been here for a while,” Val says, as Merlin gingerly picks up one of the cigarette butts between his thumb and forefinger. “I think it must be a counselor or something.”

Merlin hums noncommittally. “Well, whoever it is is breaking the rules twice, littering like this.” Now that he's looking, there are more butts sprinkled over the area. He can't imagine how anyone on bathhouse duty missed them. “Let's go,” he tells Val. “The bell for the first activity'll ring soon; you should get to your cabin and get ready.”

Val goes off without protest, and Merlin herds his own campers back to the cabin so they can change before going off to swimming lessons. He has the first period free, and he takes a book with him down to the back steps of Camelot, where he can claim one of the giant old rocking chairs on the back porch and enjoy the view. He's not counting on getting much reading done to begin with, but any chance of concentration flies out the window the minute he sees Arthur climbing the stairs, a folder under one arm.

“Hey, Arthur,” Merlin calls out, and gives a little wave when Arthur looks up, startled. “Can I talk to you?”

“Hey, Merlin.” Arthur's smile is a little bit secretive, wicked in a way that Merlin knows will inevitably lead to him throwing all his better judgment out a window and following wherever Arthur asks him to go. “What's up?”

It's the perfect opportunity to ask Arthur what he's looking for, what he thinks of when he thinks about Merlin, what his plans are. They're alone; Uther's not in the office, which means the closest humans are probably the kitchen staff, yards and yards away on the other end of Camelot. In a few sentences, Merlin could shake off his doubt and make Arthur tell him directly whether or not he gets the same roller-coaster rush Merlin feels when he thinks about cold ice cream and slick kisses and hot, eager hands on skin. 

“Merlin?” Arthur asks again, and Merlin wimps out.

“Someone's been smoking behind the bathhouse,” he says. “I caught Val back there today—not smoking,” he adds hurriedly at Arthur's look. “He was just creeping around, but there are all these cigarette butts back there.” 

Arthur's stopped just at the top of the stairs, motionless, staring down at the folder in his hand. “You're sure?” he asks.

“Pretty sure, yeah,” Merlin says. “I don't think I'm about to mistake a cigarette butt for anything else.”

There's a miniscule sagging in Arthur's shoulders; he gives a small sigh and rubs the palm of his hand over his forehead. “And you're sure it wasn't Valiant?”

Merlin shrugs, running a thumb along the edges of his book. “I mean, he wasn't actually smoking when I found him. He said he thought it was a counselor.”

“Perfect,” Arthur mutters, then musters up a wan smile for Merlin. “Thanks for letting me know.” 

“Any time,” Merlin says, and watches Arthur walk into Camelot before slumping back in the rocking chair and groaning quietly to himself. 

“Idiot,” he grumbles. “Idiot, idiot, _idiot_.”

*

The next few days pass quietly. If Merlin's a little quieter than usual, no one comments on it. He does his best not to think about the boathouse. There's nothing for him to do about it until camp is over and the moratorium Arthur's put on whatever the relationship is between them expires; he might as well enjoy the last days of summer while he can.

“You seem glum, Merlin,” Gaius tells him one afternoon, after patching up a camper who'd gotten a little too enthusiastic playing charades and scraped the hell out of her hands and knees. “Is everything alright?”

“Of course,” Merlin says, toying with the knickknacks on Gaius's desk, waiting for Margaret to finish washing up in the infirmary bathroom so he can walk her back to the activity. “Why do you have a pine cone? Are there not enough in the woods already?”

Gaius plucks the pine cone from Merlin's fingers and pats his shoulder comfortingly. “It's normal to feel like this.” Merlin snorts a laugh—Gaius has _no idea_ —and Gaius wags a finger at him. “It's true. It's perfectly normal to feel sad as the summer is ending. Camp is a special place; there's nowhere else like it.”

“That's for sure,” Merlin says, then straightens as Margaret walks back out. “You ready to get back out there, champ?”

She beams a gap-toothed smile, and holds up her bandaged palms. Merlin puts his own hands out and touches them to hers in a gentle double high five.

“Be careful,” Gaius calls after them through the screen door as they leave, and Merlin twirls a hand at him in response without looking back.

He starts checking behind the bathhouse whenever he's there, supervising or just washing his own face. There's never anyone back there, though, and the cigarette butts are gone—Arthur must have cleaned them up, he assumes—and there's no time to dwell on the mystery. The campers are, by and large, clueless, but the tension ramping up within the staff is practically palpable by the time Thursday rolls around; Vivian snaps at Elena twice and then at Percy before breakfast is over, and both Gwen and Drea look a little ill. The ACA committee is supposed to arrive mid-morning, but Merlin never sees them. He leads extra activities with George, both of them competing to channel the calm and flawless fun of a super-counselor, just in case the committee is somehow watching, evaluating. 

“Have you met them?” Gwaine asks him in an undertone during the rest period. They're closeted up in their counselor room, neither of them able to sit still.

Merlin shakes his head. “Have you?”

“Scary,” Gwaine says. “Morgause is the tiniest, most frightening blonde I've ever seen, and everyone knows she has it in for Uther—she wants to expand her own camp, and we're direct competition.”

“She can't be the only one here, though,” Merlin says, lifting his thumb to his mouth to chew on the nail.

“Well, there's Aredian, from Camp Wormelow.”

“Wormelow?”

“Trust me, the name is not the worst part about that camp. Someone's probably carved ' _Abandon hope, all ye who enter here_ ' on the trees along the driveway. He's almost lost accreditation twice.” Gwaine picks at the pitted wood of the small table. “And the rep from the ACA offices looks like he'd kill you as soon as look at you. Myror, they said his name was. Great big scary guy.”

“Shit,” Merlin says. “So we're screwed, is what you're telling me?”

“Of course not,” Gwaine says. “Not with Arthur handling everything. Probably.”

“Probably?”

“With Morgause and Aredian? It's going to be a witch hunt. They'll be looking for things they can use as an excuse to withhold accreditation.”

“Oh good,” Merlin says feebly. “That's just great.”

“Arthur can handle it,” Gwaine says determinedly, and if he's trying to convince himself more than Merlin, in the end it doesn't matter. “We should,” Gwaine says, gesturing at the curtain—there's already suspicious rustling and whispers on the other side—and Merlin nods. 

“Right. I'm just going to the bathhouse for a minute.”

He doesn't need to pee or anything; he just splashes water on his face, drying it on his shirt when he's through. All he'd wanted was a moment of air, away from the restlessness and nerves that have everyone on edge, and he breathes deeply through his nose, hands braced on the lip of the sink. 

There's something funny in the air. He frowns, and sniffs again, turning his head to the side to try for a better whiff. It smells like cigarette smoke, he realizes; it's the sticky bitterness of tobacco. Shit, whoever's been smoking behind the bathhouse must be there _right now_ , and Merlin's the only one around to catch them in the act. 

He spends one stupid minute stuck in stupid, panicky indecision before he leaps, equally stupidly, over the railing. There's a part of him that desperately wants to shout ' _aha_!' as he does so, but when he's landed on his feet and turned to see who the mystery criminal is, the triumph dies on his tongue. 

“ _Val_?”

Val drops the cigarette he's holding, scuffing it hurriedly into the ground. “What are you doing?”

“What am I doing?” Merlin says. “What are _you_ doing?”

“Nothing.” Val's got his arms crossed now, scowling as he draws himself up to his full, impressive height. Merlin swallows. “Wasn't doing anything.”

“Val,” Merlin says. “You know I can't let this slide.”

“I wasn't doing anything!”

“Let's go,” Merlin says, beckoning with a hand and trying to sound tough. “Down to Camelot, now.”

“No.”

“Now, Val.”

“Fuck you.”

“Don't make things worse for yourself. We're going.”

Val gets right in his face, terrifyingly huge and close. “Why don't you make me?”

“You don't want to do that,” Merlin warns, keenly aware of how Val's hands are drawing into fists like springs being wound tight. In retrospect, he should have known that would only provoke Val into action, like releasing all the springs in his anger all at once. Merlin ducks one blow, but he's not fast enough to dodge the next fist, and it glances off his cheekbone, a hot, bright flash of pain.

“Val, stop!”

Val doesn't stop, though; he keeps coming as Merlin retreats, and it becomes very obvious very quickly that Merlin has to end this sooner rather than later, before someone—probably him—gets seriously hurt. He has to go about it carefully, though; he could lay Val out flat in one blaze of power, but using magic on campers is probably not exactly something Uther would smile upon. It takes finesse, instead, a little extra push when Val takes his next swing, just enough to make him stumble so Merlin can get behind him and tackle him to the ground, catching Val's wrists with his magic and twisting them up behind his back. It isn't elegant, but when it's finished, Merlin has Val pinned easily—improbably—under him.

“What the fuck?” Val says, struggling.

Merlin thinks quickly. “Judo,” he says. A lie, but Val doesn't need to know that. “Ten years of it. Let's go.”

Val tries to run twice as Merlin frogmarches him down to Camelot, but Merlin foils him easily both times with some well-placed tree roots and a quiet little yank on the magic he's using to tie Val's wrists. Even so, he's starting to feel the strain of holding the magic in place by the time they reach Camelot and find Arthur just coming down the front steps from the office.

“Merlin?” Arthur says when he sees them. “What on earth—”

“I found him smoking,” Merlin says. “Behind the bathhouse.”

“He's lying,” Val says, loud. “ _I_ found _him_ , and he attacked me.”

“Quiet,” Arthur says sharply. “Merlin?”

Merlin shrugs. “I mean, you can run a DNA test or whatever you want on the cigarette lying on the ground up there, if you want; I guarantee you it won't be mine.”

“Right,” Arthur says, and pinches the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes briefly before looking at them again. Merlin's knees are dirty; Val has grass stains down the front of his t-shirt. “Right,” he repeats, heavily. “I guess...you'd better come in, then.” He holds the screen door open for them. “Wait here for a minute,” he says, and disappears into the office. 

There's a soft murmur of voices from inside, and while Merlin tries his best to listen in, it's difficult with Val glaring hatefully at him. He's let Val's wrists go, but Val is still rubbing them, and Merlin wants to yell at him that it shouldn't hurt; Merlin's careful with his magic, the hold he'd had on Val was strong but baby-soft, and it was Val's own fault for struggling, so where does Val get off trying to blame Merlin for that on top of everything?

When the office door opens again, it's not Arthur but Uther standing there, motioning them both inside. Merlin files in behind Val, shuffling through into the small room, and it takes him a minute to realize that Arthur is not the only one inside: Arthur's leaning on the desk, off to the side, and there are three people seated in mismatched chairs in the center of the room, all looking at him with varying degrees of curiosity.

Well, Merlin thinks. Shit.

Morgause he recognizes straight away—she's tiny and blond and terrifying, just like Gwaine had said. Next to her there's a handsome black man wearing a shirt with _ACA_ embroidered over the breast, who must be Myror; Aredian is on his far side, with a craggy face and severe expression.

“I realize this must seem unusual,” Myror is saying to Arthur, his voice rich and smooth. “But it's merely protocol; we're only acting in the interests of full exposure, you understand. We wouldn't dream of interfering directly in the day-to-day running of any camp.” He looks back at Uther. “What's the story here?”

Uther fixes Merlin with a look that feels exactly as if he was pinning Merlin to a board in a butterfly collection. “Merlin? Would you care to explain?”

“He attacked me,” Val blurts out, rushing before Merlin can answer. “I went to the bathhouse to, you know, do my business, and he just came out of nowhere and threw me on the ground. He was smoking, too,” he adds as an afterthought, like he's just remembered the incriminating cigarette is still lying on the grass behind the bathhouse. “He knew I'd seen him.”

“That's not true,” Merlin says before Val can say anything else. “First of all, I've never smoked a cigarette in my life.” Morgause has a pursed little smile on her face, like a cat which knows it has the both the cream and the canary, which is maddeningly distracting; Merlin shakes his head to clear it. “I'd seen Val behind the bathhouse last week; he wasn't smoking then but there were cigarette butts everywhere. I knew someone must be smoking back there, so I've been checking around the corner when I can, and today—just now—I found him smoking. The cigarette's still there, if you want to check it.”

“It appears that there was a struggle,” Aredian observes, looking Merlin up and down.

“He was angry,” Merlin says, and gestures between the two of them. “He swore at me and tried to run, and I stopped him.”

“He used judo on me; that's, like, illegal,” Val breaks in hotly, but Uther quells him with a glance.

“Arthur,” Uther says. “Do you believe Merlin?”

Merlin holds his breath while Arthur looks at him steadily, impossible to read. “Absolutely,” Arthur says at last. “Merlin's one of our best counselors. He'd never lie.”

“He _is_ lying!” Val says, but Arthur takes him by the arm and ushers him outside—Merlin barely catches sight of Morgana's concerned face before Arthur closes the office door again. 

“Well, Uther,” Aredian says, linking his fingers together and laying them comfortably across his stomach. “I must say I'm surprised you took the young man in as a camper, after I'd already thrown him out of my camp. 

Merlin blinks, processing that information. Val had been thrown out of one camp already?

“Oh?” Morgause says with sudden interest. “You never told me that story, Aredian.”

“Oh yes,” Aredian says. He's obviously enjoying himself. “He stole more than a few things from other campers; when he tried to break into my office, I decided enough was quite enough.”

“Leon and Percy have reported small things going missing from their cabin,” Arthur says slowly. “The boys have been complaining about it all week.”

Jesus, Merlin thinks. The story just keeps getting better and better. Morgause and Aredian are still exchanging stories of campers they've thrown out through the years, and Myror hasn't said a word, just watching the rest of them. He's holding a clipboard face down in his lap, lifting it once in a while to make a mark or two, and Merlin would give his left hand to see what he's writing. 

“You knew about this?” Uther's asking Arthur. “You've known about this for days, and you never said a word?”

There's no expression on his face, no particular inflection in his voice, but one look at Arthur tells Merlin that the words are calculated exactly to hit where Arthur's most vulnerable: his sense of duty, his love of the camp, his fears that he'll never be the son or the employee he imagines his father expects him to be. 

“Oh no,” Merlin jumps in, while Arthur's still struggling with his answer. “Arthur had no idea. I told him everything right now; he didn't know anything before. I hadn't told him any of it; I thought I could handle it on my own. I didn't want anyone to get in trouble.”

They all turn, suddenly quiet, to stare at him. 

“So,” Myror says. “There's no one who can corroborate your story?”

Fuck. “No,” Merlin realizes, feeling his chest cavity go cold. “No, there isn't.”

He wants to look at Arthur, wants to see and measure Arthur's reactions to everything, but there's no time before Myror looks over at Morgause. “Merlin,” he remarks, thoughtful. “Hmm. Merlin—isn't that the name you'd mentioned to me before, Morgause?”

“Yes,” Morgause says. She looks very prim, hands folded in her lap, but her face is lit up in a horrible way. “I've heard some interesting stories about this Merlin.”

“Have you,” Uther says with a look that shaves Merlin's skin clear off his bones. “Please do share.”

“Merlin,” Morgause says delicately, “and I do apologize for my bluntness, but there's no good way to put this: Merlin has been caught before watching campers in the showers.” 

There's an awful moment where Merlin can actually feel all of the blood rushing down out of his head through his ears, and Aredian says, “ _Well_. Now that is interesting.”

“Concerns were voiced to Uther,” Morgause continues, her voice still sweet as candy. “But—such a shame—nothing was done. Do you deny, Uther, that you received reports of your counselor abusing children? What else have you been hiding from us?” She's watching Merlin with distant eyes, like he's a thing she's toying with. “Perhaps Val was telling us the truth; perhaps Merlin _did_ attack him. He is, after all, far older than Val, and in a position of power over him.”

“He has a hundred pounds on me!” Merlin manages, his shock finally loosening enough to let him interrupt. “How could I possibly attack him? Not that I ever _would_ ; that's all...none of it...it's not true, I never did any of that!” 

“My source is reliable,” she says. “And that isn't all I've heard.”

Mordred, Merlin realizes. She's Mordred's aunt, and Mordred hates Merlin; he must have told her about everything, and she's twisting it all around. Fucking _Mordred_. Merlin's going to strangle that little shit, just as soon as he gets out of here.

“I wonder what parents would think,” Morgause says, her sorrowful tones at odds with the wicked look she shoots at Merlin, “if they knew their children were in the care of—well. Someone like that.”

Merlin takes a breath, his anger pushing up into his throat and burning at his tongue, ready to yell, scream, refute and rebut every nasty lie Morgause throws at him, but Arthur says, sharp, “Merlin. Out. Now.”

“But—”

“Out,” Arthur says, drawing his eyebrows together threatening. Merlin looks around helplessly, over the smooth, satisfied faces of the committee, and storms out of the office, past Morgana and Val, banging through the screen door and pounding down the back steps, running until he comes up against the lake. 

He kicks a tree stump and yells, inarticulate and long, because he's still at camp and can't scream obscenities. “Fuck,” he bites out, grabbing a rock from the shore and throwing it as hard as he can into the lake. “Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ ; fuck all of them, fuck everything.” He picks up another rock, and throws it even harder, as if he's trying to hit the kayaker who's no more than a tiny splotch of color on the far side of the lake. Maybe he can throw a rock so far he actually hits the other side; maybe he can throw it so fucking far that it goes through Morgause's fucking _window_. 

The rocks don't really make him feel better, but it's better than anything else he can think of; he can't go anywhere, because he's stuck in the godforsaken wilderness without a car, and if he starts walking he'll probably just end up lost and alone and eaten by bears. His phone is in his pocket, at least. He isn't expecting any signal, but when he fishes it out, there's one flickering bar of service. The next rock he throws makes a satisfying _plunk_ as he hits his speed dial and waits for his mother to pick up.

It rings through to her voicemail, because Merlin's entire life is shit, and he thinks about leaving her a message, but that won't make anything better—he ends up recording a few seconds of silence before he hangs up, slipping the phone back into his pocket. His mom is probably fine. She's terrible at remembering to bring her phone with her when she goes out, that's all, but Merlin can't help but feel it as a slap in the face, injury on top of insult. It feels like a cruel reminder that he fucks up everything he touches—he hadn't been able to stop the fire that took their home and made his mother so sick she lost her job; he wasn't able to get their landlord locked away for setting the fucking fire in the first place; he couldn't make Arthur want him for anything more than a quick handjob in the dark; he couldn't even do his job and expose a bad camper without being accused of being a fucking _pedophile_.

He throws one last rock, a heavy one that barely fits in his hand, launching it at the water with another hopeless yell before he allows his knees to give, hitting the ground hard and scraping his back against a tree. It had rained overnight, and the ground here is shaded by trees; he can feel the damp seeping into his jeans, but he doesn't move except to draw his knees up to his chest, burying his hands in his hair and twisting his fingers in the strands, holding on. 

That's where Arthur finds him, after Merlin's counted two bells ring out—two activity periods gone by. 

“Merlin?”

“What,” Merlin says, flat, not moving. “Come to tell me I'm fired?” He can hear Arthur squat down next to him. 

“Actually,” Arthur says. “I came to thank you. That was a pretty ballsy thing to do.”

“Right,” Merlin snorts.

“I mean it,” Arthur insists. “Are you okay? It can't have been easy taking Val down. He's five times bigger than you.”

“Two times,” Merlin objects, lifting his head. Arthur's close, looking a little worried but otherwise fine. Something eases a little in the knot Merlin's carrying around at the base of his throat, just above his collarbone. “I'm not that scrawny.”

“You are the scrawniest,” Arthur says with a mocking smile, wrapping his fingers around Merlin's forearm before letting go. “I've seen the truth, remember; I've seen you naked.”

They both stop at that, awkward, the joke falling flat; it's the first time that's come out in the open, in the daylight, and Merlin doesn't know how to react, so he picks at the dry pine needles covering the ground, snapping them into tiny pieces, one by one. 

“Listen,” Arthur says at last, palming a couple of smooth rocks Merlin had missed in his tantrum. He stands up. “My father's hands are tied. I'm going to invite Gilli to stay on as a counselor's assistant to help Gwaine out with the cabin for the rest of the week into next; George can cover your activities in PA.” 

Merlin's hand tightens involuntarily, digging his fingers into the dirt. “What?”

“The ACA's investigating us.” Arthur winds up and throws a stone with a smooth, controlled motion, skipping it easily across the lake. “Investigating you. You can't be alone with any of the kids until we've finished clearing your name.”

“But I didn't _do_ anything.”

“You can stay with Gaius in the infirmary,” Arthur says, skipping another stone. “We'll tell everyone you're sick. Hopefully it won't be for long.”

“Wait,” Merlin says. He thinks he should stand up, face Arthur like an equal, but he's stuck: his legs won't move; his head feels like it's come unattached from his body, as if the slightest movement might jostle it free. “You're serious?”

Arthur doesn't answer, which is answer enough.

“I can't believe this,” Merlin says. “I can't—really? You're going to take the word of a fucking delinquent and a—a—harpy over mine? You _know_ it's not true; you know it isn't.”

“But we can't _prove_ it,” Arthur says sharply, turning around to face him. “It's all very convenient for you to say you're telling the truth, but there's nothing we can use to make them believe it.”

And that—that gives Merlin the rush of anger he needs to coordinate his limbs again. “You're a coward. Why can't you just _say_ something, just tell them...they already knew Val was a thief, for chrissakes!” He climbs to his feet, steadying himself on the rough bark of the tree behind him. It smears warm, sticky sap all over his palm, but he doesn't care. “You _knew_ he was a criminal, you knew he'd been thrown out of one camp already, why the fuck would you ever let him in here?”

Any warmth that might have been in Arthur's face at the beginning of their conversation is gone, subsumed beneath a stoniness that matches the granite of the cliffs across the lake. “Troubled kids are the ones who need camp the most,” he says. “Look around you, Merlin. We don't have horses or a fucking tennis court; we're not a twenty-four-seven day care for rich assholes to ship their kids off to for a summer. Half the kids who come here come because they need it—because they're bullied, or their home life sucks, or whatever—they come because it's the only stable fucking thing they have.”

“Bullshit,” Merlin shoots back. “Don't make fucking excuses—”

“You think it's bullshit?” Arthur demands. His cheeks are red now, and the skin on either side of his nostrils has gone pale. “Ask Gwen, ask Freya. Hell, ask Gwaine—ask any of the counselors who grew up here, Merlin; ask them why they're still here, why they think this is the most important job they'll ever have. It sure as hell isn't for the money, no one comes here to make money. No one works here without a reason. So what's your reason, Merlin? If you hate the kids so much, if you want to put rules and limits on who gets to come to camp, why the fuck are you even here?”

Merlin draws his hands into fists, The sap is gluing his fingers together, and he can feel his nails biting into his palm hard enough to cut the skin. “You know why I'm here, you _asshole_. The only reason I'd ever be in this hellhole is because I have _nowhere else to go_.”

He regrets the words as soon as they're out. He doesn't mean them; they're nothing but the spent cartridges of his rage and shame, and he can see them hit Arthur, crashing deep into Arthur's chest as he reels back.

“I'll have Gwaine bring some of your things to the infirmary,” Arthur says quietly, all of the emotion and passion shut down and locked away. Merlin wants to reach out to him; he wants to catch at Arthur's hand and apologize, tell him none of it was true, but he stands still as Arthur walks past him, back toward Camelot.

“And,” Arthur says, pausing just as he's pulled level with Merlin's shoulder. “I am saying something. I did say something. Why else do you think you're still here?”

Merlin watches Arthur leave, feeling like he's just pulled the pin of a grenade hidden deep in his chest and leveled the ground inside him, leaving it barren, all black and smoking from the fallout.

*

It isn't so bad, staying in the infirmary, except for how it's the worst week of his life. Gaius is kind and knows what's going on, which means Merlin never has to tell him—never has to admit how much of an asshole he's been—but the shrieks and laughter of camp life come through the open windows all day, reminding Merlin just how much he's lost. He doesn't leave the cabin, though technically he's allowed to walk around the parking lot with an escort. He doesn't even get out of bed, really, and although Gaius tuts over him, he respects Merlin's wish for privacy enough to set up a curtain that looks like it's straight out of World War II, and stops well-wishers at the door.

No one seems to know what really happened; the get-well cards from his friends and his campers pile up next to him until he can't stand it anymore and sets fire to the whole stack. He's glad that Arthur kept his word to cover up the real story, but that just makes him feel sick again about his own behavior, which in turn makes him angry, a vicious circle that drives him 'round and 'round until he pulls the lumpy pillow over his face and wonders if he could smother himself to make it stop. For the first few days, he thinks about using his magic to listen out, just so he knows what's going on, what they're deciding about him, but that makes him feel sick too, so he just lies there and waits.

The weekend comes and goes; Merlin's only aware of it because it sets a terrible gnawing in his heart—it's the last week, the very end of camp, and the campers who left didn't get to see him; the ones who came won't ever meet him. They'll have Gwaine and Gilli looking after them, and George will lead them in his damn improv games; they'll never learn a card trick or the proper way to palm a coin. It hurts. It's more terrible than he'd imagined, the knowledge that camp goes on so easily without him. He'd known in an abstract way that he'd enjoyed the work, but lying on the narrow infirmary cot and staring up at the stained ceiling brings it all crashing down on him: how attached he'd gotten to camp life, how much he'd really begun to love the job. 

He stretches his toes out, separating his fingers flat on the thin mattress, and closes his eyes, imagining something crushing him, squeezing him down into the cracks in the joins of the wooden floor until he disappears. They'd never be able to arrest him if he disappeared. 

“Merlin.”

He doesn't open his eyes. It's probably a hallucination. He's heard that solitary confinement makes people hallucinate.

“Merlin, wake up.”

“No,” he says. “I'm vanishing into the wood. You'll never find me.”

“ _Merlin_.”

And—shit, Merlin realizes, that's Arthur's voice. He sits up fast, so fast that he bangs his elbow on the wall and all the blood sloshes crazily around in his head, making his vision spark and fade. “Arthur!” He throws a hand out to steady himself, squinting until he can focus his eyes again. Arthur's sitting on a spindly chair pulled up to the foot of Merlin's cot, watching him a little curiously. “Arthur, I'm so sorry.”

Arthur's face is guarded. “Forget about it.”

“I can't,” Merlin says, pulling his feet up to tuck them under him, sitting up straighter. “If they're going to drag me off to prison, I can't spend the next twenty-five years regretting things. I'm sorry about everything I said, it wasn't true. Maybe I came here because I didn't have a choice, but this camp is...” He struggles for a moment for words that don't sound trite. “Arthur, this is what camp is supposed to be. I know the t-shirts say that but it's true; this is the best job I've ever had. I wish I'd had a place like this as a kid.”

“Merlin,” Arthur says. “It's okay.”

“It's not,” Merlin says vehemently, grabbing Arthur's hand. “It's not okay, and I just—I just wanted to tell you that. And that I'm sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” Arthur says, with a tiny smile that calms Merlin's heartbeat for no more than a second before it goes it rocketing off like a rabbit's again. They're holding hands, Merlin realizes, and flushes. When he tries to pull his hand back, though, Arthur links their fingers together and holds on. “You were angry; I know this Val thing put you through hell.” 

“It hasn't...” Merlin starts. He doesn't finish, because it _has_ , it's been right up there on his list of worst life experiences, and one look at Arthur's face tells him Arthur knows it. Merlin suddenly wonders how much Gaius had shared with Arthur, and flushes deeper. 

“You've been exonerated,” Arthur tells him, and Merlin's heart falls. 

“Oh,” he says. “That's...when are the police coming, then?”

“What?”

“Aren't I going to be arrested?” Merlin asks. “I'd think that Morgause would see to it I was put away for life, my picture on all the newspapers—”

“Merlin,” Arthur says, laughing. “Merlin, you're free. You're _exonerated_ , you idiot; your name is clear. The ACA knows that Morgause was lying about everything.”

“Really?” 

“You seem surprised.”

“Well,” Merlin says, lost. “I was pretty sure my name was going on the sex offender list.”

“Idiot,” Arthur says again, but fondly. “As if I'd ever let that happen.”

“My knight in shining armor,” Merlin says, mocking, but the thought sends a little thrill racing over his shoulders. He clutches his free hand to his chest and flutters his eyelids to disguise the shiver. “How can I ever repay you?”

Arthur's laughing again. “I think a kiss is usually customary.”

“Right,” Merlin says, and then, “wait, really?”

Arthur drops his eyes, rubbing his thumb nervously over Merlin's knuckles. “I know I said we should wait, but Merlin...there's something about you. You're brave, and creative, and so good with your campers—and vain, and a complete idiot sometimes,” he adds, raising his eyebrows at the smile pulling across Merlin's face. “But I look at you and I think: fuck professionalism.” 

“Fuck professionalism straight to hell,” Merlin agrees, and moves before Arthur can change his mind or take any of it back. It's an awkward kiss at first—the angles are all wrong—but once Merlin climbs off of the bed to straddle Arthur on the chair, it gets much better. Arthur's eager, his hands running all over Merlin's back, teasing under his shirt, and Merlin—Merlin's been waiting for this, for validation that he hasn't been the only one going slowly crazy. He gets his fingers in Arthur's hair and holds him there, kissing and kissing him until his lips are puffy and raw.

“Gaius,” Arthur murmurs when Merlin pushes his hips forward, grinding down onto Arthur. Arthur's fingers slip under the back of Merlin's sweatpants anyway.

“Always takes a nap after lunch,” Merlin says. “No one's gonna see. Fuck professionalism and fucking kiss me.”

Arthur does, kissing Merlin so deep he steals the breath from Merlin's lungs and the thoughts from his head; there's nothing in the world but Arthur's mouth, Arthur's hands kneading at Merlin's ass while Merlin thrusts against him, the terrible friction driving Merlin desperate. His cock is hard already, rubbing against Arthur's belly through his clothes, and Merlin wants more—wants skin—wants Arthur.

“Shit,” Arthur says, breaking the kiss to gasp. “Merlin you're so—fuck, thought about this.”

“Yeah?” Merlin says, and shudders when Arthur drags a finger down his crack, pressing hard through the fabric. “Tell me.”

“Thought about fucking you,” Arthur whispers hot in his ear. He doesn't let up the pressure, rubbing hard back and forth over Merlin's hole until Merlin's pushing back against the touch, wanton. “Thought about taking you out to the sports field and taking you on your hands and knees until I made you scream.”

“Jesus,” Merlin chokes out, and while he's concentrating on not fucking coming in his pants, Arthur gets his hands under Merlin's clothes, his cool fingers dragging slow over Merlin's skin to dig hard into his ass, pulling him more snugly against Arthur. Merlin gets the hint, working his hips faster now, grinding into Arthur while Arthur plays with him, holding him steady with one hand while he dips his fingers in sneaky touches over the twitching clench of muscle in the cleft of Merlin's ass, pressing at it just enough to make Merlin groan. 

“Want you to,” Merlin manages. Arthur's cock is hard under him, and he's too far gone to concentrate on much more than his own dick but he wants to drag Arthur with him if he can. “Want you to strip me down and finger me open—fuck,” he breathes when Arthur pushes a finger hard enough against him that the tip of it slips inside, too dry and tight but perfect, perfect—“I need you to open me up, leave me wet and wanting until you slick your cock and f—fuck me.”

“Yeah?” Arthur says, his voice low, the growl Merlin remembers back in it; Jesus, that should be illegal. He moves his finger, working it too slow back and forth in Merlin's ass, and Merlin's close, so fucking close; he squeezes his eyes shut and rocks between his cock trapped between them and Arthur's finger, biting hard at his lower lip, still sore from Arthur's kisses, and Arthur _cheats_. “Come on, Merlin,” Arthur whispers, and licks at Merlin's neck, dragging his teeth just enough to scrape lightly along the skin. “You're gonna come for me.”

“Gonna,” Merlin grits out, strangled—straining—“Gonna fucking come.”

“Do it,” Arthur says, and fuck, _fuck_ , that's his finger going deeper, reaching up inside him, fucking him—

“Fuck,” Merlin chokes, and comes in his pants just as Arthur sets his teeth back into Merlin's neck.

He's still shuddering through the aftershocks when Arthur says, “Jesus, you're beautiful.” Merlin huffs a breathless laugh, but that shakes him enough that Arthur's finger moves in his ass again, and the laugh tumbles over into a shivering groan.

“I have to,” Arthur's saying, drawing his finger out carefully and pulling his hands around to fumble with his fly. “I'm sorry, I need—”

“Do not,” Merlin orders, sliding sort of awkwardly down from Arthur's lap to the floor. He doesn't quite have the strength back to stand. “Do not fucking apologize to me right now.”

“Yeah,” Arthur says with half a grin, pulling his cock out and giving it a slow stroke. He still looks a little sheepish about it, until Merlin sits up on his knees and puts his hands on Arthur's thighs, getting his face as close to Arthur's groin as he can. “Merlin, you don't—”

“I do,” Merlin tells him, rubbing his hands back and forth over Arthur's thighs for the sheer pleasure in feeling the muscles shift under the skin. “I really, really do.” 

He's far from expert, but Arthur doesn't seem to mind, if the way he hisses and spreads his legs, slouching lower in the chair, is any indication. His cock stretches Merlin's lips and jaw; the taste of it sets Merlin's mouth watering until the spit slides down his chin, slicking the way for his mouth to follow. Arthur's just as quiet as he was in the boathouse, the only clues to how far wrecked he is in his sharp, uneven breathing and the way his hands clench in a syncopated rhythm on Merlin's shoulders. 

Merlin sinks into a floating state, blind to everything but the smooth slide of Arthur's cock on his tongue and the ache settling into his jaw; he has one hand steadied high up on Arthur's thigh, the other playing with Arthur's balls, and when Arthur's hips start hitching up, he knows he's got Arthur right on the edge. He's just starting to sneak a finger around to the secret skin behind Arthur's balls when Arthur tugs his shoulder urgently, pulling him off. 

“I'm not going to last,” Arthur pants when Merlin looks at him. “I'm so close.”

“You should come in my mouth,” Merlin says, but he catches Arthur's hand when he reaches for his cock, pinning Arthur's fingers to his thigh and stroking it himself instead. Arthur's fingers curl under his, and Arthur pulls his feet in, raising his knees to spread them further. “You'd like that?” Merlin asks, speeding his hand—it slides easily, Arthur's dick wet already from his spit. “What if I asked you to fuck my mouth, just let go and give it to me?”

“Merlin,” Arthur manages, his voice drawn as tight as his trembling muscles, and when Merlin bends his head again, opening his mouth to take Arthur back in, Arthur comes, his spunk going all over Merlin's face.

“Oh fuck,” Merlin says, dazed as jizz drips down his cheeks. “Oh _fuck_ , that was hot.” 

“You—” Arthur croaks, then gives up and drags Merlin back into his lap with a hand curled in the front of his t-shirt, licking his own come off of Merlin's lips before kissing him, fierce and careless and dirty-deep. 

“I'm keeping you,” Arthur says when he finally lets Merlin go again, swiping his thumb across the mess on Merlin's face. “Fuck, I'm keeping you forever.”

“Too fucking right,” Merlin says, and pulls Arthur into the cot with him.

*

When Merlin finally gets back to his cabin—after two more rounds, a shower, and a thoroughly enjoyable accidental third round in the morning in which they'd scandalized Gaius—there's no one there, and he stops short in the middle of the cabin. He'd expected...he wasn't sure what he'd expected, but it wasn't to find all of his things exactly as he'd left them, his bed neatly made and tucked in at the corners. He swallows against the strange lump in his throat.

“We knew you'd be back,” Gwaine says from the door, pulling the screen door gently closed behind him. “No flu could get our Merlin down; we all knew you'd beat it.”

“Course,” Merlin said, his voice weirdly scratchy. He blinked a few times, probably too fast to be subtle. 

Gwaine pulls him into a sudden hug, pinning Merlin's arms and crushing Merlin's face into his shoulder. “Glad you're back,” he says gruffly, letting Merlin go and thumping him hard on the back. “Gilli's nice, but he's useless. Not like you.”

“Yeah,” Merlin says. “Yeah, I'm glad too.”

*

The last day of camp is strangely anticlimactic. Mordred had been gone before Merlin got back to Cabin Kay, his bunk bare, and the other kids were all new; he'd only had a few days to get to know them, so it doesn't sting like he thinks it should to wave goodbye to them. There's a staff lunch after the campers are gone where Uther thanks them all stiffly for their service and reminds them to turn in their manuals before leaving, and then it's over: the afternoon is spent helping the people who've become a family to him move out and on.

Merlin doesn't worry about packing his own things; most of them aren't his anyway, and he won't be leaving until Gaius does, which means a few more precious days at camp. It's too awful to walk around or stay in his cabin, though—everywhere he looks, there's just emptiness where there had been a hundred kids running around and fighting and laughing. He ends up spending most of the day in the kitchens, a willing conscript even into the evening as Nimueh and Sophia supervise a final cleaning of all the equipment and the walk-in. 

“So,” Sophia says, sidling up to him where he's elbow deep in sudsy water, scrubbing the discolored bottom of a pot bigger than his torso. “You and Arthur.”

He eyes her, wary. “What about me and Arthur?”

“Oh, nothing,” Sophia says, dragging a fingertip through the puddles of water on the metal counter next to him. “Just that I heard you two got a bit frisky in the camp office the other day, when Uther was in town.” 

“And on the picnic table down by the lake,” Gwen volunteers from where she's sorting silverware. “Two nights ago. I heard it was quite a show.”

Morgana looks up from the remaining leftovers she's boxing up to send out with anyone who'll agree to take them. “I'd buy tickets.”

Merlin's still spluttering in outrage when Arthur himself comes running full tilt into the kitchen and sweeps Merlin up in a giant hug while Nimueh squawks at him. “We got it!” he yells, crushing Merlin's ribs and spinning him around. “We got it!”

“What?” Merlin manages, but Arthur is already dropping him, throwing his arms around Sophia before grabbing both Morgana and Gwen up at once. He makes for Nimueh next, but she hisses at him, brandishing a spatula, and he turns back to Merlin instead. 

“Oh my God, you total loser,” Morgana, says, but she's laughing. 

“Fuck you,” Arthur says. He's tugging at Merlin's arms, pulling and twisting in a way that's confusing until Merlin realizes that Arthur's trying to _dance_.

“What are we celebrating? What did we get?” Merlin asks, still three steps too slow for Arthur, who swings him around anyway in a gleeful spin. 

“ACA accreditation,” Morgana says before Arthur can answer. “As if it isn't obvious.” 

“Full accreditation,” Arthur tells him. “Over all of Morgause's protests; _and_ , I might add, the formal complaint I'd lodged against has borne fruit. She's suspended from the board until further notice.” 

“Really?” Merlin asks, and Arthur beams, leading him around and around the kitchen in a merry waltz, each turn growing sillier than the last, until all of them are laughing and even Nimueh has cracked a smile. 

Nimueh does chase them out eventually, and they end up on the dock as the moon rises over the hills. Arthur had grabbed his guitar from the office as they went running out of Camelot into the night, and he takes his time tuning it while they talk. Gwen's leaving in the morning on a road trip with Lance down to the university they both attend, stopping at her dad's house along the way; Morgana's flying out to start her research at Stanford in a week. The August air is still slow and warm, but Merlin's seen one of the oak trees on the driveway changing color—just a few leaves, granted, but enough to signal the end of the season.

Arthur starts playing a real tune after a while, one Merlin doesn't know. Morgana and Gwen know it, though, and they join in a soft harmony to sing along, their voices echoing out across the water. 

_The seasons, they go up and down_  
 _And the painted ponies go up and down_  
 _We're captive on a carousel of time_  
 _We can't go back, we can only look_  
 _Behind from where we came_  
 _And go round and round and round in the circle game._

It's a long song, wistful and sweet; they sing a different song when it's finished, and then another, until all that's left is Arthur stringing chords together in a slow, improvised melody.

“I've got an early morning,” Gwen says at last, quiet, kissing Merlin on the cheek and getting to her feet. “You'll come see me off, though, right?”

“Of course I will,” Merlin says, as Morgana holds a hand out for Gwen to help her up. 

“Don't stay up too late, boys,” Morgana says with a wink, and goes off arm in arm with Gwen, leaving Merlin to drag his fingers in the water and watch Arthur, who's still playing, his eyes closed.

“Where will you go?” Arthur asks after a long while, and Merlin pulls his hand out of the water, straightening. “After camp, I mean.”

“I don't know,” Merlin admits. It still hurts to think about it, but—less, somehow, with Arthur next to him and the night wide open around them. Real life and all its grievances still seem very far away. “I'll probably stay with Gaius for a while; we'll take a few days to drive out and check on my mom, but there's no room there for me to stay with her.” 

Arthur puts the guitar aside and pulls his knee up onto the dock as he turns toward Merlin. “Come stay with me.”

“What?”

“Come stay with me,” Arthur persists. “I have my own place. Gaius doesn't live very far away, you could still see him.”

Merlin almost reaches out, but he hesitates—Arthur sees the movement, and catches his hand. “I don't know...” Merlin begins; Arthur cuts him off, like he's been coaching himself for this and has to get the words out while he can. 

“The summer's over. I mean, the campers are gone. And I know things were—rough—for a little while.”

“ _Rough_ ,” Merlin snorts.

“Stop that. But you said, when we started this, that you wanted me to promise something. I keep my promises.” 

Merlin just stares at Arthur, because how is he supposed to find words for this? This brilliant, beautiful, utter prat of a man who's somehow decided that out of all the world, Merlin is the one he wants to say these words to. 

“You don't have to,” Arthur says, backtracking now. “I mean, you'd be underfoot half the time, and I have work to do anyway, so—”

“Shut up,” Merlin interrupts, fondly. “Idiot. Of course.”

“Idiot?” Arthur says indignantly, and then; “Wait. Of course what?”

“Of course I'll stay with you,” Merlin says. “I'd love to.” 

“You would?”

“ _Yes_. Unless you'd rather I—”

“No!” says Arthur too quickly. “No, that's—yes. Stay with me.”

They sit there looking at each other, holding hands like they're in sixth grade and dating for the first time, until Merlin laughs and leans in. 

“Kiss me,” he says.

Arthur meets him halfway, and they kiss there, in the dark, the loons just beginning to call, and there's nowhere—nowhere—Merlin would rather be.

_fin_

**Author's Note:**

> Have you gone to check out viennajones's art yet? For shame! [Hie thee to her post immediately](http://pastelwoods.livejournal.com/2827.html). Seriously. Amazing. Just look at what she's done with Arthur and with the ice cream sign. Brilliance. ALSO HERE IS EXTRA INCENTIVE TO CLICK THROUGH TO HER POST: she's put together a truly, indecently perfect _map_ of Camp Albion in all its glory; go check it out right now! Right now, I said; why are you still reading this? GO!
> 
> ♥ ♥ ♥ 


End file.
